Maha: 406 Chhatrapati-era cannonballs dug up in Pavangad Fort

By Quaid Najmi Kolhapur (Maharashtra), Feb 5 : In a big find, over 400 cannonballs, believed to be of the 16th-18th century Chhatrapati era, were unearthed in and around the ramparts of the Pavangad Fort in Kolhapur in the past couple of days, officials said here on Friday.
The Panvangad Fort, one of the hillforts constructed in the Western Ghats in the 17th century by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, is located on the Panhala spur, around a km to the east of Panhala Fort and the two forts are separated by a deep forested ravine.
A local group of fort-lovers, ‘Team Pavangad’ along with forest department officials, accidentally made the discovery while digging holes to install signboards for tourists on various aspects of the fort in the past two days.
“The big and small cannonballs, each weighing around 100 gms to 7,000 gms, were found in shallow pits around 2-3 feet deep, assembled in 2ft X 3 ft rectangular stacks or in ‘military readiness’ with indications that more of these ammunition may be found buried there,” one of the Team members Maruti Patil told IANS.
Though the digging work is on since a week, the first of the artillery was found only around noon on Thursday, sending waves of excitement among the team members.
After that the team-mates started systematically digging up the area with renewed vigour to unearth many more cannonballs from there, and at the last count, 406 are now deposited with the Archaelogy Department at its Panhala office, Patil said.