[1] More than 200 bakhars were written in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the most important of them chronicling the deeds of the Maratha ruler Shivaji.
[2] The principal characteristics of bakhars are that they were written in prose, had a forceful style of writing, were of political historical nature which appealed to Maratha patriotism, were often commissioned by a patron, displayed an acceptance of tradition and also a belief in the supernatural.
[1][3] The bakhar, which is the compilation of three authors of the 15th and 16th centuries - Bhagwan, Datta and Keshavacharya - is significant as the earliest attempt at uniting the Marathi-speaking populace against oppressive Bahmani rule.
[3] Some of the bakhars include: Most historians have long neglected as unreliable, due to their colourful literary style with elements of Marathi, Sanskrit aphorisms and Persian administrative jargon.
Shankar Gopal Tulpule described the bakhars as a reliable source of history,[1] while the Indian nationalist historian Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade (1864–1926) described them as "full of meaningless verbosity" and "fragmented, contradictory, vague and unreliable".