History of Bengali Language and Literature c10.13

c10.13

another to gain the *gadi*, were events of every-day-occurrence in the courts of Indian noblemen. Rājā Kṛṣṇa Chandra of Navadwip by a stratagem which was highly praised, deprived his own uncle of his rightful ownership of the *gadi* of Kṛṣṇagar. Kṛṣṇa Chandra’s son Çambhu Chandra played a similar dodge and tried to usurp the possessions of his father, by spreading a false report of his death. The Rājā was thus going to be paid in his own coin. His agent at Agradwip in Burdwan by an equally unscrupulous action ousted the rightful owner out of the possession of that place and gained it for his own master. In the Courts of Serajuddulāh, the Nabab, plots of a far more important character were being formed fraught with consequences which were to change the history of the whole of India. It was not an age conspicuous for its appreciation of high ideas or of noble sentiments. “Rājā Kṛṣṇa Chandra was hostile to the followers of Chaitanya.”* He frustrated the efforts of Rājā Rājavallava who had tried to obtain sanction of the Pundits of Bengal to the remarriage of Hindu widows of tender ages. Yet Kṛṣṇa Chandra was the most important man of the period in the Hindu Society of Bengal. His Court had gathered round it some of the greatest Sanskrit scholars of the country. He appreciated merit, patronised literature, and encouraged art. The far-famed clay-models of Kṛṣṇagar and the fine cotton-industry of Çantipur owe their perfection to the patronage of the Rājā. The Rājā was friendly to the English and it was he who first put the idea of overthrowing Serājuddulāh by the help of the English into the head of Mirzāfar and other influential men engaged in conspiracy against the Nowāb. Kriṣṇa Chandra was himself a scholar of no mean order. He could discuss knotty problems of logic with Hari Rāma Tarka Sidhānta and in theology he was a match for the far-famed Rāmānanda Vāchaspati. He was well-versed in the doctrines of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, and made endowment of lands to the great exponents of that learning of the period—Çiva Rāma Vāchaspati and Vireçwara Nyāya Panchānana. He could compose extempore verses in Sanskrit and competed personally in public with Vāneçwara Vidyālaṅkāra—the famous Sanskrit poet of his court.