[10] This name of Krishna, which means “He who quits the battle,” is connected with the story of the transfer of the Yādava clan from Mathurā to the new capital on the coast of the peninsula of Kāthiawār, the city of Dwārāka. This migration was the result of an invasion of Braj by Jarāsandha, king of Magadhā, before whom Krishna resolved to retreat. As his path southwards took him through Rajpūtānā and Gujarāt, it is in these regions that his form Raṇchhōṛ is most generally venerated as a symbol of the shifting of the centre of divine life from Gangetic to southern India.
[11] In the Granth Nāmdēo is called a calico-printer, Chhīpī. The Marāthi tradition is that he was a tailor, Shimpī; it is probable that the latter word, being unknown in northern India, has been wrongly rendered by the former.
[12] It will be remembered that Akbar’s reign was remarkable for the translation into Persian of a large number of Sanskrit works of religion and philosophy, most of the versions being made by, or in the names of, members of his court.
[13] Religious Sects, p. 132.
[14] Amīr Khusrau is credited with the authorship of many still popular rhymes, riddles or punning verses (called pahēlīs and mukurīs); but these, though often containing Persian words, are in Hindī and scanned according to the prosody of that language; they are, therefore, like Malik Muḥammad’s Padmāwat, not Urdū or Rekhta verse (see Professor Āzād’s Ābi-Ḥayāt, pp. 72-76). A late Dakkhanī poet who used the takkalluṣ of Sa’dī is said by Āzād (p. 79) to have been confused by Mīrzā Rafī‘us-Saudā in his Tazkira with Sa’dī of Shīrāz.
[15] An exception may be made to this general statement in favour of the genre pictures of city and country life contained in the masnavīs of Saudā and Naẕīr. These are often satires (in the vein of Horace rather than Juvenal), and are full of interest as pictures of society. In Saudā, however, the conventional language used in description is often Persian rather than Indian.
[16] To be carefully distinguished from the reformer of the same name who flourished half a century later.
HINDU CHRONOLOGY. The subject of Hindu chronology divides naturally into three parts: the calendar, the eras, and other reckonings.
I. The Calendar