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III. EARLY BARDIC CHRONICLES (1150-1400) The Earliest Poets.— During the time when the Rajput clans were establishing their power, and while they were struggling with the Muhammadan invaders, every court had its bards who celebrated in song the valour and heroism of their patrons and their race. These bards belonged to guilds, which Vv^ere also castes, and there are said to have been Charanas, Bhatas, Sevagas and Pancholis. The Charanas and Bhatas both claimed Brahmanic descent. The language used at first by these bards must have been the local Prakrit, but gradually the Prakrit developed into the modern vernacular. A number of bards are mentioned by tradition as having composed poems between 700 and 1150 A.D. The chief of these are Pushya (or P^mda)^ Kedar, A7ianya Das, Masaud, Qiitub AH and Akaram Faiz. Their work, however, has not survived and it is therefore impossible to say whether the language they used is to be reckoned as Prakrit or as the modern vernacular. A poetic chronicle of the ruling family of Mewar, called the Khuma?i Rasa, which dates from the sixteenth century, is said to have been founded on a work written in the ninth century, but no fragment of the original has survived. In 1143 a certain Kumar Pal became king of Gujarat, his capital being at Anhilwar. In 1159, under the influence of the Jain scholar Hemachandra he became a Jain, and at a rather late date Hemachandra w^rote a romantic poem in Prakrit entitled Kuniara Pala Charit7'a. An anonymous bardic chronicle, called by the same name, in the early speech of the modern vernacular is