He has an old document in the Modi script that contains a detailed recipe of gulkand, from how to separate the petals to how much sugar is needed to make it fragrant and delicious. “The harvest was so bountiful that almost every farmer in Nasik began to plant Damascus roses and make gulkand and other rose preparations,” he says. Shivaji Maharaj’s Modi script letter (Image Courtesy Rajendra Dhume)įrom another part of the city, Mahesh Joshi, a scholar of the Modi script, talks about the Damascus rose, whose saplings were brought to Nasik from Afghanistan and planted on a fertile patch of land. There are crores of documents like it,” says Mohite, who studies the Modi script at Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal in Pune from Rajendra Dhume, a history scholar and Modi script expert. Hambirrao’s letter tells us how he managed troops and his generals, what motivated him, and his level of confidence. People like Hambirrao are hidden from mainstream historians in the pages written in this script. “If anybody wants to know Maratha history accurately, it is necessary to first understand the Modi script.
