Page:Kalhana's Rajatarangini Vol 1.djvu/6

 vill PREFACE,

literature possessing the character of a true Chronicle, account for the efforts which have been directed towards the elucidation of the work ever since European scholar- ship became aware of its existence. A brief review of these earlier efforts will help to indicate more clearly the object of the present publication and the nature of the labours it has involved.

As early as the seventeenth century Dr. Bernter, to whose visit to Kaémir in the summer of 1664 we owe the first European account of the Valley, and one as accurate as it is attractive, had turned his attention to the ‘histories of the ancient Kings of Kachemire.’ The Chronicle, of which he possessed a copy, and of which, as he tells us, he was preparing a French translation, was, however, not Kalbana’s work, but a Persian compilation, by Haidar Malik, Cadura, prepared in Jahangir's time avowedly with the help of the Rajaterangini.! Also the summary of Kaémir rulers which Father TIRFFENTHALER a century later reproduced in his "Description de l'Inde,” was still derived from that abridged rendering?

Even before, however, the work of the Tyrolese missionary appeared in print, Mr. Gladwin had published his translation of the 4in-1 Akbar of Abi-1-Fazl, and as the latter distinctly quotes Kalhana’s Chronicle as the anthority for his own abstract of early Kasmir history, the Sanskrit original could no longer escape attention. We accordingly find the “history of India from the Sanscrit Cashmir authorities” prominently included among the tasks which Siz Wittiam Jonzs had contemplated. The life of the pioneer of European Sanskrit studies was cut short before he could obtain access to these authorities, It was not until tho year 1805 that Mr. ConeprooxE secured in Calcutta an incomplete copy of Kalhane’s work, and even then twenty more years passed before his intention of giving on account of its contents was realized.

To Dr. Horace Hayman Wrieon’s justly famous “Essay on tho Hindu History of Cashmir” belongs the merit of having first acquainted Wuropenan students with the general character of Kalhana’s work and of having furnished them with a critical abstract of the contents of its firet six cantos.! The round judgment and thoroughness displayed in this publication of the distinguishoil Sanskrit scholar deserve all the more credit, ap the three incomplete Devanigari manuscripts at his disposal were 80 defective “that a close translation of them, if desirable, would have been impracticable.” Thie serious difficulty sccounta for

1 Soo Bunnag, Travels, ed. A. Constable, p. he spent. 904. The trandation on which B ere t 80 many years aftor his return from

Me iste aged a fret Mogbul’s Court ?

ems to have ly ony for a 10 Description de t' Inde, i. p. 80.

time has never been published. L It possible = 9 Asiatic Daria, ip. ‘a

that it still lies other pepers of that ‘ Published in 1825, in Vol. xv. of the learned and most observant traveller in one Asiatic Researches, Caloutta,

of the archives of his native country, where