24 W. Irvine —Nadir Shdh and Muhammad Shah , a Hindi poem. [No. I, 
Nadir Shah and Muhammad Shah, a Hindi poem by TiloK Dis r contri¬ 
buted by William Irvine, late of the Bengal Civil Service. 
[ Read February, 1897.] 
The poem of which I send a transcript, transliteration and transla¬ 
tion, accompanied by some notes, was found last year (1895) among the 
books of the late Mufti Sultan Hasan Iflian of Bareli (Rohilkhand). 
Access to these books was obtained by my agent, Maulvi ‘Abdu-l-‘Aziz f 
through the good offices of C. Rustomjee, Esq., C. S., at that time 
Judge of the district. 
In the exemplar found at Bareli the verses are wrongly placed, 
being given in the following order, 1-6, 77-93, 7-76, 94—103. This 
mistake I have corrected. The numbering gives 103 verses, but 
apparently they ought to be reckoned as one hundred and five. Verse 
No. 7, as it has eight lines, ought, I fancy, to be counted as two verses 
of four lines each; and the Dohard, No. 103, is given as one verse of 
four lines, whereas Dohard meaning ‘ a couplet/ the four lines; 
form properly two couplets. After making this correction, I find the 
kinds of metre used are :—52 Dohard (104 lines), 11 Sorathd (22 lines), 
1 Kabit Dohard (2 lines), 18 Kabit (17 x4 and 1 x2, 70 lines), 2 Savaiyd 
Kabit (8 lines), 9 Savaiyd (36 lines), 9 Aril (36 lines), 3 Chaupdi 
(12 lines), giving a total of 105 verses and 290 lines. 
Our copy is in the Persian character, as was perhaps to be expected 
owing to the Muhammadan source from which it has been obtained. I 
have made further enquiry, but no Nagari original is now forthcoming. 
But we may assume that the work was originally written down by the 
author, as all other Hindi poems are, in the Nagari character. The 
free use of purely Persian and Arabic words (suggested, no doubt, by 
the nature of the subject), is to be noticed, making of this poem an 
early specimen of the Hindi mixed with Persian, which the late Raja 
Shiva Parshad advocated as the true literary language (see Grierson, 
“Modern Vernacular Literature,” 1889, No. 699, p. 148). 
I know nothing of the author beyond his name, Tilok Das, which 
appears in the last line of verse 7. The work is not dated and no 
patron is named. But since verse 103 contains a mention of Nadir 
