382 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [Nov., 1914. 



materials for the history. In the case of them, therefore, if 

 they are to be taken into account at all, as they certainly ought 

 to be, an altogether different method should be adopted from 

 that in the case of bardic poems. Thsy should be searched 

 for and classified by means of a Descriptive Catalogue, so that 

 they may all be ready for reference , and their contents critically 

 examined and compared with a view to ascertaining their 

 historical value and discarding doubtful and fictitious matter 

 from authentic information. It is only authentic information 

 that deserves to be published, and it should be given in the form 

 of a connected History. In the particular case of Jodhpur, 

 prose-chronicles are exceptionally faithful and reliable and their 

 dates correct from the time of Rava Jodho (first half of the 

 sixteenth Samvat century) to the present day, but as regards the 

 antecedent period traditions are doubtful and dates wrong. Two 

 important dates, the one referring to Rava Slho (Samvat 1330) 

 and the other to his son Dhuhara (Samvat 1366} have been 

 fixed from inscriptions recently discovered, and it is evident 

 that it is only from inscriptions we can now derive the means 

 for checking and correcting the chronicles of the earlier period 

 in the Rathora history. That inscriptions referring to all the 

 descendants of Siho as far as Rinamala are in existence, can 

 hardly be doubted, and if a proper search is made in the histori- 

 cal localities where they are most likely to be found, many new 

 materials are sure to come to light. I shall return to this point 

 later on, when treating of the search for bardic and historical 

 manuscripts, and will show that both the search for manu- 

 scripts and that for inscriptional records can and should be 

 carried on together. 



Bardic poetry includes poems of some extension {vela, 

 jhulana, raso etc.) and small historical songs (gita, kavitta etc.), 

 of which rich collections have been preserved in manuscripts 

 and go under the general name of phutakara gita. A good 

 number of these are anonymous and some", no doubt, very old, 

 though they have been much modernized in form, as might be 

 expected. As regards the publication of bardic poems, it is 



™? as that ' when important and interesting, they should be 

 published separately as literary texts, and their historical value 

 examined and discussed in introductions to each of them. 

 They should also be accompanied.by English translations and 

 notes, without which they would be of very little help even to 

 the average Hindi scholar. As regards the publication of the 

 small songs, there are some distinctions to be made. Songs 

 referable to a single poet, of whom the name has been preserved, 



u^ u eollected and > if sufficient can be obtained, they 

 should be published together as one body, under the name of 

 the author, and this in view of the fact that literary composi- 

 tions by one author are his property, and whatever their 

 contents may be. reflect, hia r.Arao« Q i,fxr an A +v,^ ., n ;G„*tinn of 



