Page:Kalhana's Rajatarangini Vol 1.djvu/9

 PREFACE, a

employed in Kalhane’s chronological reckoning, and thus succeeded in fixing with fair accuracy the dates for almost all the kings from the advent of the Karkots dynasty onwards. In the same paper, published in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1846, he communicated the results of his search for ancient Kasmirian coins, aud proved by their analysis the great value of numismatic evidence for the critical control of Kalhana’s records® Equally useful for the study of Kaémirian au- tiquities was his rapid survey of the most conspicuous architectural remains of the Hindu period still extant in tie Valley.® It threw light on the history of interesting temple-buildings mentioned ia the Chronicle, and also enabled General Cunningham to identify a number of localities whieh are important for the ancient topography of the country.

Professor Lassen, who in his great encyclopasdia, the Indische Alterthumskunde, gave an exhaustive analysis of Kalhana’s Chronicle, had no original materials of any kind at his dispossl. We can, therefore, scarcely feel surprised if even his learning and acumen failed to extend materially the store of trustworthy historical data already gathered by Professor Wilson and General Conningham. The conjectural attempts to establish synchronisms between the semi-legendary portion of Kalhana’s record and the earlier epochs of general Indian history could not be expected to furnish useful results at a time when the reliable date regarding the latter were yet so scanty. Similarly I have been obliged to point out elsewhere that the tendency towards purely conjectural identifi- cations of local names displayed in this analysis hes often caused the narrow territorial limits to be ignored to which the events recorded in the later and historically most valuable portion of Kalhane’s narrative are in reality restricted,"

All these labours had clearly proved that trustworthy materials were required before the contents of the Chronicle could be made fully available for historical and antiquarian study. Yet no attempt was made to secure them until Professor G. Bixer, then of the Bombay Education Department, during the summer of 1875, visited Kaémir in search of Sonskrit manuscripts. Many important results rewarded his brilliant researches and render this tour a memorable one in the snnels of Sanskrit philology. But none among them, perhaps, show more clearly the keen historical sense and the sure perception of the departed great scholar than

® The ancient coinage of Kashmir, with tecture as exhibited in the Temples of Kashmir, chronological and historical notes, in’ “The in J.A.S.B, 1848. ¢ ’ Numismatio Chronicle and Journal of the — ” Seein particular Indische Alterthumskunde, pai Society,” 1846, No. xx. pp. 1 it pp. 18 agq,, 753-781, 886-914 ; ini. pp. O84- q- An Excy on the Arian Order of Archi- _™ Seo below, Vol. I, p. 350,