The legends of the Panjâb

XXVI
PEBPACE.
ttese are the only instances in which I have allowed myself
such license. The preliminary notes and footnotes have been
purposely made very short, and are expressed in tentative
language for these reasons ;—Most of the subjects they touch on
are hardly yet
ripe for decisive and detailed annotation, and in
making them I have practically had to look to my personal
knowledge and research, which I naturally distrust, and to my
own limited libra.ry.
It will be as well also to explain that in this collection so
much prominence has been given to the stories of saints and
holy personages, because it is really by a careful study of
such
things that we can hope to grasp the religious and superstitious
ideas that dominate the bulk of the
Indian populations.
If once the student of Indian religions, as practised,
properly
understands the full signilBcance of such a production as the
Marriage of Sakhi Sarwar, he will have learnt more than
volumes of lucubrations by scholars in Europe can teach
him, when based, as they often are, upon researches into
the glorified imaginings of philosophic recluses and self-interested
priests.
I may be forgiven if I make an appeal here to others able
and willing to do so, to help on the good work of recording the
bardic effusions of Aryan India. The Panjab is by no means
the
only part of the country where the bards flourish, nor is
it even the best field for researches into their songs. All
along our frontiers, wherever the Balochki and the Pushto
languages are spoken, the bard has a natural home, and in Sindh
he has become a proverb. In Kachh and Kathiaw^r and in.
RajasthSin he is to be found at the Court of each
of the .innumerable
'kings' that hold sway over those vast tracts of
country, and again further east we find him flourishing in full
vigour in Orissa, and once more we find him cherished and
carefully tended along the whole line of the Hill States from
Kashmir to Kumaun. The conditions of his "existence in the
Panjab proper are practically those under which he flourishes
throughout the North-West Provinces and Awadh. Vast
then is the field and unrivalled the opportunities. Those of