Punjabi qissa manuscripts: start with a shelfmark and test the description

A manuscript record requires language and script separately

J.F.Blumhardt’s 1899 British Museum catalogue describes Or 1943 as a thirty-folio nineteenth-century copy of Qadir Yar’s Puran Bhagat, written in Nastaliq. It identifies the poem as Punjabi while describing the script through the terminology of its period. These are different fields: a script label does not turn the poem into Persian. The shelfmark identifies a particular object whose reading can be compared with a printed edition; it is not simply another title for every Puran Bhagat narrative.[1]

An extract is not a complete narrative

The same catalogue’s entry 90 identifies Or 1959 as extracts from a Punjabi metrical Saif al-Muluk by Lutf Ali, with a copy date given as AH 1262/1846. It describes opening verses, passages from the middle, concluding verses and a chapter index in red. This is a different attribution from Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, and a selected witness rather than an assumed complete poem. Preserve the shelfmark, author, folio range and catalogue reference before making a claim about absence or sequence.[1]

Check access after identifying the object

The British Library’s current guide directs readers to its Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue and explains how to filter for available digitised content. It distinguishes manuscripts in the Library’s care from digital images created through the Endangered Archives Programme at other archives. A digital image’s host and an original object’s repository therefore require separate recording. Begin a new search with the shelfmark, then check the current description and availability instead of assuming every item in an older catalogue has a working viewer.[2]

At this guide’s November 2026 check, the Library also warned that some digitised items remained unavailable following its cyber-attack. That notice does not establish the status of either qissa manuscript named here. An old printed description, a current catalogue entry and the manuscript images provide successive kinds of evidence. Cite what has actually been inspected and preserve the distinction when documenting further research.[2]