41- A Scheme for the Bardic and Historical Survey 



of Rajputana* 



By Dr. L. P. Tessitori. 



Introduction. 



When, in consequence of my appointment as an editor of 

 the Bardic and Historical Literature of Rajputana by the 

 Government of India, I arrived in Calcutta on the 11th April, 

 1914, and presented myself before the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 

 which for the last nine years had been in charge of a prelimi- 

 nary survey of the work now entrusted to me, I naturally 

 began by inquiring how far things had proceeded ; and I was 



wn 



nary Report on the Operation in Search of MSS, of Bardic 

 Chronicles (Calcutta, 1913), and a heap of foolscap-copies of 

 Bardic and Historical works made by the Bardic Office in 

 Jodhpur and presented by the same State to the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal. This was all that had been done, and the 

 funds (Rs. 2,400 only) placed by the Government of India at the 

 disposal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal had been thereby 

 exhausted, and the necessity was felt of immediately asking for 

 a grant from the Government, so that the work might proceed. 

 A Scheme, in which an annual grant of Rs. 9,000 was demand- 

 ed from the Government, had been submitted by Mahamaho- 

 padhyaya Hara Prasada Sastrl in his aforementioned Prelimi- 

 nary Report, but it had not been passed by the Council of the 

 Society, nor did it seem Jto be satisfactory. In Mahamaho- 

 padhyaya Hara Prasada Sastri's idea I was to work in Cal- 

 cutta, on the foolscap-copies presented by the Jodhpur State, 

 and therefore no arrangements had been made by the Society 

 for my stay in Rajputana. Under such circumstances, what 

 with my applying to the Society to be allowed to go to Raj- 

 putana and what with the Society asking the consent of the 

 Government of India and the delay necessarily involved in 

 these proceedings, it was only on the 22nd July I was able to 

 leave Calcutta for Rajputana on a preliminary tour of about 

 three months to make myself acquainted with local conditions 

 in regard to bards and manuscripts and to enable jnyself 

 properly to criticize Mahamahopadhyaya Hara Prasada Sastri's 

 Scheme and to prepare a new one. The three months I 

 was detained in Calcutta were almost entirely wasted for my 

 work, as I had neither helps nor materials to work upon there. 

 The foolscap-copies sent from Jodhpur were found to be 



