228 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [November, 1905. 
29. Vidyapati Thakur.—By G. A. Grierson, C.1.H., Pu.D., 
D. Litr., Honorary Member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 
I have read with great interest the account of the collection 
of Vidyapati’s poems, which is given by Babt. Nagendra Nath 
Gupta on pp. 20 and ff. of the Extra No of Vol. LXXIII, Part 
I, of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He has been 
kind enough to refer to the small collection of songs published by 
me about twenty-three years ago. In order to facilitate his 
labours, may I state at once that I have learnt a good deal since 
then, and that I by no means maintain all that I wrote about 
Vidyapati in 1882. 
Babt' Nagendra Nath Gupta refers to the deed of gift of the 
village of Bisphi as if he considered it to be a genuine document. 
I am afraid that this contention can hardly be sustained. The 
plate contains a date in the Fasli San, and that date was lone 
before the Fasli era had been invented. He will find a facsimile 
of the grant in the Proceedings of the Society for August, 1895. 
My reasons for considering it to be spurious are given in fall on 
page 96 of Vol. LXVIIT (1899), Part I, of the Journal. See also 
Dr. Eggeling’s Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS. in the India Office 
Library, Part IV, No. 2864. 
The following list of articles on Vidyapati may be useful :— 
J. Beames. The Harly Vaishnava Poets of Bengal. Indian 
Antiquary, II, 1873, p. 37. 
J. Beames. On the Age and Country of Vidyapati. Ibid. IV, 
1875, p. 299. 
Article in the Banga-dargan, Vol. IV, 1282 B.S. (Jyaistha), 
Badia: 
: Sarada-caran Maitra. Introduction to Vidyapatir Padavali. 
Second edition, Calcutta, 1285, B.S. 
G. A. Grierson. Vidydpati and His Contemporaries. Indian 
Antiquary, Vol. XIV, 1885, p. 182. 
G. A. Grierson. On some Medieval Kings of Mithila. Ibid. 
Vol. XXVIII, 1899, p. 57. 
Pandit Chanda Jha, referred to by Babi Nagendra Nath 
Gupta, has published a useful edition of the Sanskrit text of the 
Purusapariksa, together with a translation into Maithili. It was 
printed at the Raj Press, Darbhanga, in 1296 F.S. He has added 
a valuable Appendix dealing with historical questions, and con- 
taining frequent quotations from the Kirtti-lata, a work of Vidya- 
pati partly written in the Maithili of his time. If these quotations 
are correct, they show that the vernacular of the poet’s time 
differed widely from modern Maithili, and was rather a form of 
Prakrit. 
I believe that Mahamahopadhyaya Pandit Hara Prasad 
Sastri discovered a very old collection of Vidyadpati’s poems in 
Népal in the year 1899. He was kind enough to send me a copy 
of one of them, which showed much the same Prakritic appear- 
ance. I had published a current version of the same song in my 
