58 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XII, 



were placed at my disposal for a period of three months in the 

 first instance, and when this period expired and I asked for a 

 renewal of their leave, it was refused. So they remained with 

 me only three months, Rama Karna assisting me practically 

 only till the beginning of May, when he fell ill, and Kisora 

 Dana till the end of the same month. The travelling man, 

 though eventually not always the same Bhata Nanu Rama, 

 was employed till the end of October , and so also the copyist , 

 but in the months of September and October I had two copy- 

 ists instead of one. To proceed with order, I will divide the 

 work under two heads, corresponding to the Editing and Local 

 Superintending Department and the Searching Department in 

 my Scheme. In the Publishing Department nothing was done, 

 as in the beginning the Asiatic Society of Bengal withheld 

 sanction for printing the results of the Survey till the decision 

 of the Government of India was known, and afterwards there 

 were no funds to meet the expenses of publication. 



To begin with the editing, the most noteworthy result 

 achieved is the preparation of the edition of the Vacanika 

 Raihora Ratana Singha jl ri Mahesadasdta rl, a bardic poem by 

 Carana Khiriyo Jago. A dozen manuscripts of this poem had 

 been collected during the preliminary period August — Novem- 

 ber, 19H, and to these others were added subsequently, some 

 of which dating from the end of the seventeenth century a.d. 

 Of all the manuscripts thus collected, 13 have been taken into 

 account in the edition prepared. The work was composed a 

 few years after the battle of Ujain (1658 a.d.), fought by 

 Maharaja Jasavanta Singha of Jodhpur on one side, and Aurang- 

 zeb and Murad, the two rebel sons of Shah Jahan, on the other. 

 It is the aforesaid event that the poem celebrates, but special 

 homage is paid to the heroism of Ratana Singha, Raja of 

 Ratlam, in Malwa, wV was killed on the field. It is a work 

 of a high literary va. j and enjoys a certain popularity, espe- 

 cially in Marwar, though the form of language in which it is 

 couched, is far beyond the intelligence of the average reader. 

 As proposed in my Scheme, the edition of the poem will consist 

 of two parts : the one containing he Dingala text with differ- 

 ent readings and critical notes, and the other the English trans- 

 lation with historical introduction and explanatory notes. 



Besides the Vacanika, the edition of another work has 

 been prepared for the press , and this i3 the Uktiratnakara by 

 Sadhu Sundara. It is not a bardic work, but a work on gram- 

 mar in the form of an etymological glossary, and its chief 

 importance lies in the fact that it throws a considerable light 

 on the Old Marwarlof the beginning of the seventeenth century 

 a.d. I have shown elsewhere that the Dingala language of 

 the bards of Rajputana is ultimately but Old Marwarl, or, to 

 use a more comprehensive term, Old Western Rajasthani, 

 hence the connection of the Uktiratnakara with our field of 



