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).