Kavindra Paramananda Sanskrit c. 1670s
Kavindra Paramananda was a Sanskrit scholar in Shivaji's own court, and he composed this epic during Shivaji's lifetime, reportedly with the king's encouragement — making it one of the earliest eyewitness-adjacent sources on his life. Though the poem was left unfinished and covers events only up to around 1660, it preserves valuable detail on Shivaji's early campaigns not found elsewhere.