Tanaji Malusare won Sinhagad in 1670 but died in the assault

Tanaji Malusare — a Maratha commander (subhedar) from the Konkan, boyhood friend of Shivaji and leader of the assault, who died at the moment of victory. Chhatrapati Shivaji — the Maratha king who ordered the recapture as the first blow of his post-Purandar campaign, and whose lament gave the fort its new name. Suryaji Malusare — Tanaji's brother, who led a second party up the cliff and, when the shaken Marathas began to waver after Tanaji fell, is said to have rallied them to hold the fort; he was later made its commander. Udaybhan Rathod — the Rajput officer holding Kondhana for the Mughals, who met Tanaji in close combat; both men are said to have killed each other. Shelar Mama — Tanaji's veteran uncle, prominent in the ballad tradition as a steadying hand in the fight. Jijabai — Shivaji's mother, whom tradition credits with urging the fort's recovery. Mirza Raja Jai Singh — the Mughal general whose 1665 campaign had forced the Treaty of Purandar in the first place, setting the whole episode in motion.

The numbers frame the drama. Under the Treaty of Purandar, signed on 11 June 1665, Shivaji ceded 23 of his forts to the Mughals — keeping about 12 — with Kondhana among the most prized. The fort sits on the Bhuleswar range roughly 1,312 metres (about 4,300 feet) above sea level, its scarp rising some 760 metres above the plain — steep enough that a frontal storm was ruled out. On the moonless night of about 4 February 1670, Tanaji Malusare led a small band — by most accounts a few hundred Mavale — up an unguarded cliff against a Mughal garrison held for Jai Singh by Udaybhan Rathod. Later accounts put Maratha dead near 50 and Mughal losses at some 300, with several thousand troops said to be overwhelmed, though these figures are uncertain and likely embellished. Tanaji himself was killed, and a grieving Shivaji renamed Kondhana as Sinhagad, the Lion's Fort. The single fort was the opening move: within months Shivaji had retaken most of the 23 forts surrendered at Purandar.

This is a story where the legend has grown far larger than the record, and honesty means separating the two. What is documented: Kondhana was surrendered under the 1665 Treaty of Purandar; the Marathas retook it on 4 February 1670 in a night assault led by Tanaji Malusare; Tanaji died, and the fort was renamed Sinhagad. These appear in early Maratha chronicles such as the Sabhasad bakhar and are broadly accepted. What is ballad and folklore: the tamed monitor lizard 'Yeshwanti', tied to a rope and sent up the cliff to anchor the climb, is a beloved detail from the povada ballad tradition, not a documented fact — most historians treat it as legend. What is uncertain: the exact numbers, whether Tanaji and Udaybhan literally killed each other in single combat, and even Shivaji's precise words, are known mainly through later retellings and may be embellished. What is anachronism: Kondhana's garrison is often loosely called Aurangzeb's, but the fort was held under the Rajput officer Udaybhan for the Mughals. The safe core is the outline; the vivid particulars, however cherished, should be read as the work of poets as much as chroniclers.

Behind the triumphant slogan lies a great deal of death. Tanaji Malusare climbed to victory and did not come down alive; his brother Suryaji had to steady terrified men in the dark, over their commander's body, to hold what had just been won. Chronicles and later accounts speak of hundreds of Maratha and Mughal soldiers killed on that cliff and inside the walls in a few brutal hours — Mavale who had followed Tanaji up the rope, and Udaybhan's garrison who defended it to the last. On the Maratha side the loss was intensely personal: Shivaji lost a friend he had known since boyhood, and Tanaji's family lost him on the eve of a wedding he never returned to. The famous line 'the fort is won, but the lion is lost' is really a statement about cost — that the prize was not worth the man to the king who won it. For the ordinary soldiers on both sides, remembered by no ballad, there was only the anonymous violence of a night assault: the fall from a cliff, the blade in the dark, the fort taken and the friends not coming home.

Why does a single night's fight for one hill fort still matter, three and a half centuries on? Partly because Sinhagad became the opening line of a longer story: within months of retaking it, Shivaji recovered most of the forts lost at Purandar, and within a few years he would be crowned Chhatrapati of an independent Maratha kingdom. Kondhana was where the recovery began, which is why it is remembered as a turning point rather than a skirmish. But its deeper hold on memory is about meaning, not maps. The image of a commander who set aside his son's wedding, climbed an unclimbable cliff and died winning it — and of a king who counted the victory as loss — became a template for how Maharashtra tells itself about loyalty, sacrifice and the price of freedom. That is also why the legend outgrew the record: a people needs its heroes vivid. The honest lesson is to hold both at once — to honour a real man's real courage on a real cliff in 1670, while remembering that much of what we 'know' about that night is poetry. History and ballad both shaped Sinhagad, and understanding the difference is part of respecting it.