Records of Judge and Magistrate of Patna for the Years (1820-1825) (An Old and Rare Book)

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The present press-list is the outcome of an official assignment that was mad to me on my joining my joining the Institute in 1952. I was directed to examine and made report on the historical importance of the old records of the office of the District and Session Judge of Patna, then deposited in the library of the Bihar Research Society, I made a random selection of some volumes for the pигрово and submitted my report in which I emphasised their potentialities as source- materials for the history of Bihar. Thereupon I was asked to continue my study of these records without ut any particular instruction for my guidance. So in my own way I began the work, sometimes taking extracts from certain letters, but mostly noting down their subjects only. My notes ended generally with a paragraph or two of my comments on the importance of the particular volume under study. I followed this method for sometime and then gave it up in favour of listing the records which then appeared to me the more important ones. Soon I realised that I should not have been selective in listing the records. Thenceforth I began the listing of all records individually and for purposes of future reference marked them serially by red and blue pencil. Meanwhile Dr. K. K. Datta's book "Selection from Unpublished Correspondence of the Judge- Magistrate and the Judge of Patna", based on the same records, became ready for the Press. The Director of the Institute, late Dr. A. S. Altekar, therefore, did not think it advisable to continue the work. The work was stopped there but by then I had finished the study of nearly one hundred volumes. No use was made of the lists for a long time. At one time Dr. K. K. Datta, when he was the Director of the Institute, thought of publishing them. I myself was, however, not very enthusiastic about their publication as no uniformity had been observed in the study of these records. The credit for finding a way out so that my labour should not be wasted, goes to Prof. S. H. Askari, Honorary Joint Director of the Institute, who very patiently and sympathetically went into the matter and decided to publish, in the first instance, only that portion of the Press-list in which an uniform method had been followed. For the present purpose the press list of Book nos. 51 to 75, covering the period 1820 to 1825, have been selected. Of these Book numbers 63 and 64 contain only circular letters of 1822 and 1823 and Book no. 68 is missing. But the missing volume does not create any gap in the regular series of records, for Book no. 67 closes with the records of December, 1823, and Book no. 69 opens with the records of January, 1824. Possibly the missing volume contained circular letters only. The series thus apparently looks complete. But there does exist one gap. Although the Book nos. 51 to 67 are in proper sequence we do not have any volume containing the records of the first three months (January to March) of 1823. Book no. 64, of course, contains records from January to December of that year but all of them, as pointed out above, are circular letters. Thus in the existing series Book no. 62 ends with the records of December 1822, and Book no. 65 starts with the records of April, 1823.