हम्मीर महाकाव्यम् (रणथम्भौर चौहान वीरगाथा एवं इतिहास)

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has any reference to the history of the hero of our poem. Colonel Tod does not inform us in what language the Hammîra Kâvya and the Hammîra Râsâ were written, though he says he possessed both, and mostly translated with the assistance of his Jain Guru. He does not attempt anything like a connected narrative of Hammîra. Indeed, what he says incidentally of Hammîra does not at all relate to any one individual of that name, but is a jumble of anecdotes relating to several distinct personages bearing the same name. I obtained the Hammîra Mahâkâvya through Mr. Govinda Śâstri Nirantar of Nâsik, who got it from a friend of his. The colophon reads—"The present copy was made for the purpose of reading by Nayahaṁsa, a pupil of Jayasiṁha Sûri, at Firuzpur, in the month of Śrâvaṇa of the Saṁvat year 1542" (A.C. 1496). Possibly this was made from the poet's original copy, and, as such, possesses an interest of its own. Nayachandra Sûri's work, as a poetical composition, has considerable merits, and deserves publication as a specimen of the historical poems so rarely met with in the range of Sanskṛit literature. Though the author did not live, like Bâṇa and Bilhaṇa, in the reign of the hero whose history he celebrates, yet his work is not of less historical importance than theirs. The information that the poems of Bâṇa and Bilhaṇa contain has been made accessible to English readers through the labours of two eminent European Sanskṛitists. The present attempt to place the English reader in possession of the historical information contained in the Hammîra Kâvya will, I presume, be acceptable to those who are interested in the advancement of our knowledge of Indian history. Following the custom of other writers in Sanskṛit, who have attempted historical compositions, our author devotes the greater part of one entire chapter, the fourteenth and last, to an account of his lineage, and the reasons that led to the production of his