§ 128 .] 
tul’si das. 
47 
Gltciball, the Kabittaball, and the Sat Sal are by Baij’nath, Ham 
Charan Das’s commentary has been printed by Nawal Kishor, of Lakh’- 
nau, but is now out of print. The other commentaries can be bought 
in any Indian bazar. All the commentators have a great tendency 
to avoid difficulties, and to give to simple passages mystical meanings, 
which Tubs! Das never intended. They are unfortunately utterly 
wanting in the critical faculty. Though there are abundant materials 
for obtaining an absolutely accurate text of at least the Ham-Charit- 
Manas, the commentators have never dreamed of referring to them, 
but have preferred trusting their inner consciousness. As an extreme 
example, I may mention one who drew up a scheme of the number 
of verses which each section of each canto ought to have, in a numer¬ 
ically decreasing order, after the pattern of the steps of a bathing ghat, 
because the poem is called a lake ( manas ). Nothing could be prettier 
than this idea; and so he hacked and hewed his unfortunate text 
to fit this Procrustean bed, and then published it with considerable 
success. It never occurred to him or his readers to see if this was 
what Tubs! Das had written; and if they had done so, the ludicrous 
nature of his theory would have been evident at the first glance. 
Regarding Tubs! Das’s style, he was a master of all varieties, from 
the simplest flowing narration to the most complex emblematic verses. 
He wrote always in the old Bais’warl dialect, and, once the peculiarities 
of this are mastered, his Ram-Charit-Manas is delightful and easy 
reading. In his Gltciball and Kabittaball he is more involved, but still 
readable with pleasure; in his Dohdball he is sententious; and in his 
Sat Sal as difficult and obscure as any admirer of the Nalodaga could 
wish. The Sat Sal is a veritable tour de force , and I am glad that 
this, almost the oldest specimen 1 2 of a kind of writing which was 
brought to perfection fifty years later by Biharl Lai (No. 196) (the 
mine of commentators), is being edited with a commentary by 
Professor Blhari Lai Chaube in the Bibliotheca Indica.* The Binay 
Pattrikd is again in another style. It is a book of prayers, often 
of the most elevated description, but its difficulties are very unsatis¬ 
factorily elucidated by either of the two commentaries on it which 
I have seen. 
1 It was written (Sat. i. 21) in Sambat 1642, i.e. A.D. 1585. Bidyapati’s 
emblematic verses were written about A.D. 1400. 
2 Since this was written an edition of this work, with a commentary by 
Baij’nath, the editor of the Gitabali and Kabittaball, has been published in 
1886 by Nawal Kishor, of Lakh’nau. 
