पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

130 PANIPAT: 1761 Bhau Sahebanchi Bakhar,⁹ on the other hand, gives quite the opposite story It tells us of Abdali's Vakil coming to Bhau just before the battle and asking him to postpone the fight for the day in order to give a last chance fot peace talks Bhau is reported to have unceremoniously driven him back, be- ginning the fight at once thereafter Sir Jadunath, though he considers the Marathi Bakhars "as later gossipy fabrications no better than opium-eaters' tales,"¹⁰ has still to acknowledge that "there are some true traditions (as proved by authentic records) and some statements .which have every appearance of being true though unsupported elsewhere" We do not know whether Sir Jadunath would like to believe in this Bakhar story, which, we think, as most improbable and written to suit the whole tenor of the author, who was out to condemn Bhau and make a scapegoat of him Kashiraj was on the battle field that whole day, no doubt, but that fact cannot make any person see the whole line of battle with his own eyes, much less can it give him a correct idea of the order of the battle on the opposite side Kashiraj, with all his sagacity, was a civil official and not a soldier who could judge military matters correctly For the most part, he was standing ready in his own camp throughout the day of the battle He himself confesses that Shuja's side was the least affected part in the line of battle, because none came to attack it The whole line of battle is taken by Sir Jadunath to cover some seven miles So it was physically impossible for Kashiraj to see anything but a small part of the actual battle, and that, too, from a distance His value as an eye-witness must, therefore, be discounted to a great extent, and his version of the battle must be taken as gathered after the event from the gen- eral reports which came to his ears This work of collecting news from various sources and afterwards collating and correlating it into the form of a running narrative could be done by others also, and, therefore, we have no valid ground to reject the version given in the Marathi Bakhars and letters only because we are unaware of the status of the narrators We have shown in the detailed de- scription of the battle the various points wherein Kashiraj is proved to be wrong 2 Bhau Sahebanchi Bakhar (1922) and 3 Shrimant Bhau Saheb Yanchi Kaifiyat (1887) These two are the most important primary sources about the battle of Panipat in Marathi Their authors are unknown but they were certainly much nearer to the event than Kashiraj when they wrote, as can be proved from the language, the tone and the textual criticism of their manuscripts Certain pas- sages in the narration of the events in the Kaifiyat are found bodily incorporated in the Bakhar¹¹ which is a bigger narrative of the event From this we can say that the Kaifiyat, small and to the point, was the earlier narrative of the two, of which the Bakhar was an amplified edition with enlarged paraphrase. The Kaifiyat gives the life of Bhau from the point of his start for the Udgir cam- paign of 1759-60 and closes with the retreat from Panipat. The Bakhar, on the other hand, narrates the Maratha activities in the north from 1753 on- 9 Bhau Bakhar (1922) p 115 10 Fall 2.367 11 Cf Kaifiyat 21 and Bakhar 141, K 22, B 144, K. 23, B. 143.