Twilight of the Sultanate c16.s6.7

c16.s6.7

As in the Madhya Desa, so also in Bengal, Sanskrit ceased to be a living language after its conquest by the Turks. In the absence of the printing press and with very few hand-written works existing, it became the exclusive care of the pandits. It lost touch with life and reality and "ploughed a lonely furrow in the barren fields of hyper-subtle scholasticism".¹¹¹ Muslim Sultans and nobles were interested in encouraging art and literature, and got Sanskrit books translated into Bengali. The first Bengali translation of the *Mahābhārata* was undertaken at the command of Sultan Nāsir Shāh in the fourteenth century. But the father of Bengali poetry was Krittivāsa Ojhā who translated the *Ramayana in the* fifteenth century (c. 1418).¹¹² Maladhar Vasu translated the *Bhāgwat Purāna* in 1473-1480 at the command of Sultan Rukanuddīn Bārbak Shāh, from whom he received the title of Gunarāj Khan.¹¹³ Sultan Husain Shāh of Gaur (1493-1519) patronised Vipradās Piplai and Vijaya Gupta, the author of *Mansā Mangal*.¹¹⁴ At the command of Pārangal Khan, a general of Husain Shāh, Kavindra Paramēsvara translated a larger portion of the *Mahābhārata*. From the early fifteenth century the tradition of reciting in Bengali the *Ramayana* and *Mahābhārata* stories and the stories relating to Krishna gained currency.¹¹⁵