Nagendranath Basu

[7] Nagendranath was an official surveyor of Orissa government in Mayurbhanj district,[8]: 227  and traveled widely to examine archaeological remnants, compiling numerous sculptures, coins and inscriptions.

[8] In 1884, he published Shabdendu Mahakosh, an English-Bangla dictionary and in the process came in close contacts with Anandakrishna Basu (a grandson of Raja Radhakanta Deb) and Hara Prasad Shastri, who persuaded him to join The Asiatic Society.

[14] Basu gathered these kulapanjikas from ghataks (matchmakers) across the country, who used to hold high acclaim in the Bengali society as professional genealogists (to the extent of arbitrating disputes of societal status) and effectively served as tools of social memory.

[3][8]: 274 The historicity of the source material for his work were rejected in near-entirety by a majority of the contemporary professional historians including Akshay Kumar Maitreya, Ramaprasad Chanda, R. C. Majumdar, R. D. Banerji et al., belonging to the logical-positivist school of thought.

[14][16] Not only the tales were emotionally charged verses with distinct impressions of caste-chauvinism but also they oft-contradicted each other, suffered from dating inaccuracies and failed to be corroborated by archaeological evidence.

His interpretations are now deemed to be of questionable reliability, courtesy his strong antipathy towards the Muslim rule in India and a rigid acceptance of the-then prevalent caste hierarchy as a social order.

[21] His usage of kulapanjika as authentic source(s) has not only introduced aspects of un-reliability[17] but also espoused a Savarna view of the world;[8]: 282  outright myths, legends and popular imaginations (esp.