[5] Scholars such as Narottamdas swami, Namvar Singh, and Cynthia Talbot date the text to the 16th century, during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605).

[3] For example, the 15th century text Hammira Mahakavya, which appears to have been written for a Chauhan patron, does not mention the heroic episodes contained in the Prithviraj Raso.

[8] Scholars, such as Cynthia Talbot, Narottamdas Swami and Namwar Singh date the text to the 16th century, during the reign of Akbar.

The patrons of only 17 of these can be identified: they include kings and princes from the royal families of Bikaner, Amber (Jaipur), Kota, Jodhpur, and Udaipur; and a chief of Mewar.

[15] The present version of Prithviraj Raso is composed primarily in Brajbhasha dialect, with some regional Rajasthani peculiarities.

[16] Prithviraj Raso frequently uses the six-line "chappay" metre, which has "harsh, warlike connotations", and is more prevalent in Dingal than in Brajbhasha.

[25] The text implies that Prithviraj had been blinded before his imprisonment, as he realises his failure to kill Shihab al-Din when he hears the sound of the statue breaking.

[26] In the Prithviraj Raso, Kaymas falls in love with a slave from Karnataka, and visits the queen's palace to meet her at night, while the king is away on a hunting expedition.

Prithviraj's Paramara queen sends him a letter complaining that Kaymas has been violating the privacy of the women's quarters.

Prithviraj then secretly buries Kaymas along with his slave-lover, but Chand Bardai learns about the king's dishonourable act in a dream.

[28] Frances Pritchett, a professor of South Asian Literature at the Columbia University, notes that the killing of Kaymas is one of the three key episodes integral to the plot of the original version of the Prithviraj Raso, the other two being the king's eloping with Samyogita, and his killing of Shihab al-Din.

There is also an insinuation that Prithviraj's unjustified murder of Kaymas led to his misfortune of being defeated and blinded by the Ghurids.

[15] The similarities between Prithviraj Raso and Prithviraja Prabandha suggest that one of these texts borrowed from the other, but it is not clear which of these was authored first, making it difficult to trace the origin of the legend.

Alternatively, it is possible that the Jain texts borrowed the story from an older oral tradition which is the basis of Prithviraj Raso.

[31] The language of the texts available today largely appears to be post-15th century and to be based upon the 17th-century compilation commissioned by Amar Singh II, the Sisodia ruler of Mewar.

Its manuscript, generally dated to 1703 CE, states that "stupid poets" had separated Chand Bardai's text into different parts: Karuna-udadhi wrote the current version by "picking through the strands" on the orders of Amar Singh.

[32] This version appears to have been written as the part of a campaign to revive the Mewar dynasty's prestige, which had declined as a result of their setbacks against and later alliance with the Mughals.

[10][38] Since the 16th century, the Rajput rulers patronized Prithviraj Raso for its elements of heroic exploits, romance and revenge.

James Tod, who introduced the text to the Western scholarship, characterised it as an authentic historical source[39] but is today considered himself not to be reliable.

[3][42] These concerns were dismissed by those who saw Prithviraj Raso as an authentic indigenous text (as opposed to the Persian-language histories by Muslim writers).

[41] The Mewar State official Mohanlal Vishnu Pandya tried to prove the text as authentic using forged documents.

[41] While not strictly history, the Prithviraj Raso is a source of information on the social and clan structure of the Kshattriya communities of northern India.

For example, the most popular recension of the text mentions the Agnikula legend, according to which Chahavana or Chahamana, the progenitor of the Chauhan dynasty, was born out of a fire-pit.