शौनकचा कट्टा..

Hemadri Pandit. Decolonisation is not merely the removal of foreign political power. It is the restoration of intellectual confidence. It is the recovery of systems. It is the reclaiming of institutional memory. The Maratha Empire did not simply challenge imperial authority on the battlefield; it reconstructed the civilizational backbone of Bharat. At the heart of that reconstruction lay something deeply profound yet often overlooked: the revival of the ancient Indic tradition of accounting and state book-keeping embodied in the concept of मेस्तक (Mestak). What is Mestak? Mestak was a structured accounting manuscript tradition, a codified format for recording state revenue and expenditure. But more than that, it was a philosophy of governance. The preserved shloka states: लेखकासी हे मेस्तक। नीतिवंता नीतिशास्त्र देखा। राजकी लोकांसि विवेक। प्रकट करी।। लेखणी दिधली ज्याचे हाती। तो स्वीकारिला सरस्वती। लेखनकळा वर्षा आरती। साधली तया I आताही जे असता धरिती येणेप्रमाणे लिहिती। त्यासी पावेल सरस्व...