INTRODUCTION. (Temporary). The following is an attempt to give a correct text and translation of the Padumāwati, or Padmāvati of Malik Muhammad of Jāyas in Oudh. He flourished under Shēr Shāh in the year 1540 A.D., and numerous MSS. of his great poem are in existence. The value of the Padumāwati consists chiefly in its age. Malik Muḥam- mad is, we believe, the oldest vernacular poet of Hindústān of whom we have any uncontested remains. Cand Bar'dai was much older, but the genuineness of his Prithīrāj Rāy'sā is denied by many competent scholars. Vidyāpati Thākur, who lived in the year 1400 A.D., has only left us a few songs which have come down to us through five centuries of oral transmis- sion, and which now cannot be in the form in which they were sung. The preservation of the Padumāwati is due mainly to the happy accident of Malik Muhammad's religious reputation. Although profoundly affected by the teaching of Kabir, and familiarly acquainted with Hindū lore, and with the Hindu Yöga philosophy, he was from the first revered as a saint by his Muḥammadan co-religionists. He wrote his poem in what was evidently the actual vernacular of his time, tinged slightly with an admixture of a few Persian words and idioms due to his Musalmān predilections. It is also due to his religion that he originally wrote it in the Persian character, and hence discarded all the favourite devices of pandits, who tried to make their language correct by spelling (while they did not pronounce) vernacular words in the Sanskrit fashion. He had no temptation to do this. The Persian character did not lend itself to any such false antiquarianism. He spelled each word rigorously as it was pronounced. His work is hence a valuable witness to the actual condition of the vernacular language of Northern India in the 16th century. It is, so far as it goes, and with the exception of a few hints in Alberuni's Indica, the only trustworthy witness which we have. It is trustworthy, however, only to a certain extent, for it often merely gives the consonantal frame work of the words, the vowels, as is usual in Persian MSS., being generally omitted. Fortunately, the vowels can generally be inserted correctly with the help of a few Dēvanāgari MSS. of the poem which are in our possession. Besides its interest as a key to a philological puzzle, the Padumāwati also deserves notice for its contents. In itself it is a fine poetical work, and one of the few original ones, not dealing with either Rāma or Krishna, with which we are acquainted in any Indian language. It is also remarkable for the vein of tolerance which runs through it, - a tolerance in every way worthy of Kabir or of Tulisi Dās. The story of the poem has been a favourite 1 The author himself invariably spells the word thus.
