xxxii Annual Report. [February, 1910. 



Bardic sources, gave much valuable assistance and advice and 

 promised to help the Shastrl at Kishenghar when he would 

 go there. Barhat Balabux, of Hanutia, promised to do any 

 amount of editing work for the Asiatic Society. He has de- 

 voted his whole life in the collection and elucidation of Bardic 

 history in Rajputana. Munshi Deviprasad, an officer in the 

 reserved list of the Jodhpur Darbar, was deputed by that 

 Durbar to accompany the Shastri wherever he went. The 

 Munshi 's family migrated from Delhi to Bhopal, from Bhopal 

 to Ajmere, and from Ajmere to various States in Rajputana. 

 His accurate and extensive knowledge of history written 

 in Persian, and the keen interest he feels in the antiquities, 

 archseolocry, and ethnology of Rajputana was of great service 

 to the Shastrl. Pandit Tukaram Vaman Saligram, with whose 

 assistance Mr. Akworth made his now classic collection of 

 Marhatta ballads, has made another collection of more than GO 

 such ballads, and is prepared to place his whole collection at the 

 disposal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal under certain condi- 

 tions. Ram Ram Murtanda Bhamburkur. head clerk to the 

 Private Secretary of the Maharaja of Gaikwar, has made a very 

 respectable collection of the Marhatta ballads of the Gaikwar 

 family, and is likely to publish them at the cost of the Gaikwar's 

 Government. 



The difficulty of the collection of the Bardic chronicles lies 

 in the fact that the greater portion of them are still handed 

 down by the word of the mouth. The written literature is 

 not even a third of the oral. The bards are proverbially bad 

 caligraphists. The little that they have written is illegible to 

 others. It requires to have the services of trained scribes to 

 write these songs in legible Nagri, keeping each word distinct 

 from the other. Copying the songs , therefore , is not only difficult 

 but very costly. But thanks to the interest taken by Mal- 

 sisar and other noblemen, such scribes can, with a little search, 

 be had in many parts of Rajputana. Two such scribes have 

 been already employed by the Shastrl to copy out Suraj- 

 prakasa by Karanldana, a classical work on the history of 

 Rajputana written about 200 years ago, and the Bardic 

 chronicles of the family of Acrol in Jaipore, or what is called 

 the Balabhadrot family. 



The area which is to be explored for the purposes of the 

 conservation of Bardic chronicles is bounded on the north by 

 Delhi, on the south by the Krisna, on the east by Behar, 

 and on the west by the Indus. There is no knowing that Bar- 

 dic chronicles do not exist beyond these limits. The meaning of 

 the word Rajput is very vague. If it means anything definite 

 it means any ruling family of high caste. A Rajput can- 

 not subsist without a Carana. The Carana lives with the Raj- 

 put, shares all his weals and woes and by his songs keeps him 

 straight, rouses his spirits in moments of depression, and keeps 



