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Appajirao Chalukya sitting in the attire of a Sardar, 4 the same Sardar Chalukya on the background of the fort of Kalyani, 5 ancient
paintings of the Sardar s ancestors, and 6 various locations from the fort of Kalyani. Interestingly, the editor reports in his
Bhūmikā that both the original manuscripts were thrown by him into the Ganga due to heavy termite-infestation, and hence the text was brought out only from the press-copy
prepared by the editor and possessed by the Sardar.
1.3: Attention of V. V. Mirashi was drawn to the book by a letter written to him in
June 1973 by Devisingh Chauhan, a scholar of ancient and medieval Indian history,
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who had already written an article on the said
kāvya Bhāratīya Itihāsa āṇi Saṁskṛti, Vol. 37, April 1973, pp. 19-30.
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Mirashi communicated to him his doubts about its genuineness and also wrote an article maintaining that such a
kāvya could not have been composed before the various literary and archaeological sources of Indian history were brought to
light by researchers of the 19th and 20th centuries. He, thus, labelled the said kāvya as
spurious Bhāratīya Itihāsa āṇi Saṁskṛti, Vol. 40, January 1974, pp. 48-60, also Journal
of Indian History , Vol. 52, pp. 217 ff..
1.4: As mentioned earlier, G. B. Mehendale has dealt with this issue exhaustively
in Eka Banāvaṭa Aitihāsika Kāvya which stands as the 15th Appendix to his work rī
Rājā ivachatrapatī published in 1999 Vol. 1, part 2, book 1, pp. 531-561, and has thrown fresh light on various aspects of the issue.
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He has enumerated the objections on the authenticity of the
kāvya as follows: 1 Dates of about a hundred historical events from aka 143 to aka 1713 have been
given in the kāvya, a fact that does not corroborate with the level of historical knowledge
that the Indians or for that matter even outsiders
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possessed in 1815 CE. 2 Such a long history of no other dynasty or house is known.
3 Various modern ideas and elements of articulation appear in the text; for example, the k
āvya mentions that Ayyaṇa had researched in astronomy and propounded his discoveries in a text called Viraha-
abhiharā . This stands against the ancient Indian practice to refrain from identifying any discovery with the name of its investigator.
4 Information of historical facts that have come to light decades after the composition of the
kāvya appears in the same. Mehendale has alleged that Vishwanath Shastri Bharadvaj himself must have
fabricated the kāvya at the instance of the Sardar in order to establish him in the lineage
of the Cālukyas, and that a great amount of paraphernalia in the form of photographs,
etc. has been deliberately created around its text with the same objective in mind.
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1.5: The discussion on the use of kerosene as mentioned in the said
