History of Bengali Language and Literature c10.86

c10.86

In the preliminary account of Padmāvati Ālāol says that Māgana Thākur, the prime minister of the Chief of Ārācān, had employed him to translate the Hindi poem into Bengali,—high-flown Sanskritic Bengali,—because the people of Ārācān did not understand Hindi but understood Bengali. This leads us to the conclusion that the popular literature not only of Āssām but also of the border-lands of Ārācān used to be written in Bengali, a circumstance confirmed by the other fact to which we have already drawn attention, viz. that it was the low class Māhomedan population of these places who have preserved these poems for about 250 years.