Chand_Bardai

Chand Bardai (fl. c. 1200), Hindu poet, was a native of Lahore, but lived at the court of Prithwi Raja (Prithiraj), the last Hindu sovereign of Delhi. His Prithiraj Rasau, a poem of some 100,000 stanzas, chronicling his master’s deeds and the contemporary history of his part of India, is valuable not only as historical material but as the earliest monument of the Western Hindi language, and the first of the long series of bardic chronicles for which Rajputana is celebrated. It is written in ballad form, and portions of it are still sung by itinerant bards throughout north-western India and Rajputana.

See Lieut.-Col. James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajast’han (2 vols., London, 1829-1832; repub. by Lalit Mohan Auddy, 2 vols. ib., 1894-1895), where good translations are given.

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