पृथ्वीराजविजय महाकाव्यम् (कवि जयानक - अजमेर चौहान साम्राज्य एवं सम्राट् पृथ्वीराज इतिहास)

PREFACE The birch-bark manuscript of the Pṛithvīrājavijaya, the critical edition of which is offered to the public, was discovered by Dr. G. Bühler in 1876 during his tour in search of Sanskrit Mss. in Kashmir. He deposited his find in the Deccan College, Poona, where the Ms. was numbered as 150 of 1875-1876 collection. In the course of his detailed report on the tour, published next year, he thus described the Ms.:— “It is a great pity that the old Ms. is mutilated, and in such a condition as to make the work of reading it very difficult. The beginning is wanting. The leaves which contain cantos I—X have been broken in the middle by the friction of the thick string used for sewing the volume. Further, the lower portions of a considerable number of leaves have been lost, and as the lower left-hand side of the margin, on which stood the figures numbering the leaves, has also been broken off, it is impossible to determine the connection of the upper and the lower halves by any other means than by the sense.”¹ Though the Ms. was discovered more than half a century ago, no new Ms. has been discovered since then to help us in reconstructing the whole work. What is all the more regrettable is the fact that the present Ms. breaks off abruptly towards the close of the twelfth canto. In the absence of any other copy of the Ms. it is impossible to say how many cantos the complete work contained. As ill-fortune would have it, the present Ms. brings us only to the corona- tion of Pṛithvīrāja and we are even left in the dark about the great victory, which the poet intended to sing here. The defective and incomplete condition of the Ms. prevents us from knowing definitely from the work itself about its author. But a guess may be hazarded (1) Detailed Report of a tour in search of Sanskrit MSS., made in Kashmir, Rajputana and Central India, by Dr. G. Buhler (p. 63).