lives in their hands, before relentless pursuers, could not have burdened themselves with papers during their perilous flight across the entire Deccan peninsula. Sabhasad's work, therefore, is entirely
derived from his memory — the half-obliterated memory of an old man who had passed through many privations and hardships. Malhar Ram Rao
Chitnis had no State-papers of Shivaji's or Shambhuji's times, because, as I have shown above, all such had perished during the ravages of the long Mughal wars. He does not cite a single document,
and he derives all his facts from Sabhasad, thereby proving that he had no other source of information.
Internal evidence shows that all the so-called "old bakhars" uncritically accepted or published by Rao Bahadur D. B. Parasnis (and his English mouthpiece, Mr. Kincaid) have the same literary characteristics. They contain "loose traditions," often palpably false, a maximum of legends super- natural marvels and bazar gossip, with a minimum of facts and dates. (The cities of Bijapur and Golkonda are founded in consequence of exactly the same prodigy ! Javlikar More-yanchV chhoti Bakhar.) All are anonymous and of unknown date.
These so-called bakhars are evidently the production of some ignorant credulous dull-brained writers, and not the work of any clever minister of State or scholarly author. They do not make the least pretence of being based upon contemporary written records or authentic State-papers. They
