Kings of Kashmira Vol 2 (Rajatarangini of Kalhana)/Preface

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Kings of Kashmira

Being A Translation of the Sanskrit Work

Rajatarangini of Kalhana Pandita: Vol.2

By Jogesh Chunder Dutt

1887

London: Trubner & Co.

Preface

[p.i]: The writer has the pleasure now to lay before the public the second volume of his translation of Rajatarangini. He regrets the long time which has intervened since the publication of the first volume in 1879 and the issue of the present volume. His official duties, ill health and long absence from Calcutta were mainly the causes of this delay. The volume, now published, completes the work of Kahlana and brings down the narrative to a period when the country of Kashmira was just recovering from a long and disastrous civil war.

Kahlana was contemporaneous with the last king whose account is narrated in his history, and probably he used to read his work, from time to time, at the court of his sovereign. He has consequently made every effort to justify the conduct of the princes of the usurping dynasty, and to censure, often unjustly, the conduct of the last king of the previous line. Writing for a courtly audience, Kahlana often indulges in style which is more artistic than clear; and his love of alliteration has clouded many an important passage. In several places, persons and events have been referred to by him so incidentally as to make it extremely difficult for us to identify them, though the sense was no doubt clear


[p.ii]]: to people of his generation. And, lastly, his narration too is not faultless. Not only does he often attaches undue importance to insignificant incidents, but he also travels from subject to subject without having the patience to complete the account of any one of them. He might have left us much more of useful and valuable information of his own times than he has done.

As regards the history of times anterior to his, all that can be said is, that, in the absence of any other historical records, his must be considered very valuable. Wherever light has been received from other sources, his account appears to be meagre and incomplete, though generally correct.

But whatever his defects may be, one is inclined to overlook them when he considers that he is perhaps the only author in Samskrita, now known, who attempted to write a sober history. If he did not write quite in the spirit and style that would be approved in modern times, it was more the fault of the spirit of his national literature than his own. To him belongs the credit of discovering, as it were, a new department in literature which it was the duty of his successors to improve.

J. C. Dutt.

Calcutta,

The 14th March 1887.



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