History of Bengali Language and Literature c11.s2: III. General remarks chiefly indicating the characteristics of the new age and its contrast with the earlier one

History of Bengali Language and Literature c11.s2

Language: English

III. General remarks chiefly indicating the characteristics of the new age and its contrast with the earlier one

These are some of the products of the literary labours of our countrymen in the vernacular tongue under the intellectual stimulus of the first contact with Europe. They continued the work with an ardour which has grown without intermission, and our present day literature is the richest among the vernaculars of India in quality and in its many-sided activity. The lists I furnish embrace the literature of a period ending 1850, but it is only at and after the middle of the 19th century that we can see the full harvest grown from the seeds sown at the beginning. The works on various subjects written in Bengali after the model of European works abound like "leaves by the streams of Vallombrosa," and it will be a hard task for the historian of the present epoch of our literature to make his selection from amongst the very considerable materials which will be at his command.

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Bengali literature, previous to the advent of the Europeans on the field, was mainly in the hands of the Vaiṣṇavas and Ṣāktas. The songs of Kṛṣṇa Kamala who belonged to the former and of Rāma Prasāda who belonged to the latter sect, are the last great utterances of the two cults, the echoes of which will ring in the ear of future generations of Bengalis for ages to come. The *yatrawalas*, *kaviwalas*, and *panchalikars* drew profusely from the vast resources of our past lore, and having put the old sentiments in modern garb appealed to our masses. But with these people the last echoes of our past literature have nearly died out. There are still *kirtanas*, *kathakatas* and *yatras*, but they no longer contribute to the rich literature of the past. They only recite what the old masters have sung or said, and are mere relics of institutions which were once a living force in the country.

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The old literature of Bengal was a truly representative literature; Bhārata Chandra's writings and Ālāol's style, though so artificial and loaded with classical figures, were yet accessible to the masses of Bengal. The literature of the Bengalis belonged essentially to them all,—not to the literate merely, but to the whole race. For hundreds of years its ideas had been made familiar to the whole country by innumerable ways and means. The whole race had assimilated these sentiments which found expression in their literature; and even the finished expressions, and the highly coloured metaphors that had characterised the productions of latter-day Sanskritic Bengali were not unintelligible to the people. The best evidence of this statement will be found in the fact that very low classes of men and even those who are thoroughly illiterate, have preserved up to the present, works like the Padmāvat which are still being printed for them. This shows great advancement on the part of the people in mastering a highly wrought literary style, and the past literature of Bengal was the medium through which the words of her poets and scholars were communicated to the lowly, the humble and the poor, who, often without knowing the alphabet, could understand the most difficult points in the Hindu philosophy or poetry under the educative influences of their own heredity and environment.

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The old school upset.

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But towards the end of the 18th century the Vaiṣṇavas and the Ṣāktas were practically driven out of the field. Our vernacular literature passed into the hands of Europeans; and they trained a class of people to write manuals and school books after the manner of their own standard works. Mr. Wilkins trained Panchanana Karmakāra in the art of punch-cutting, but this was not all; it was the Europeans and chiefly the missionaries who trained the Pundits to write Bengali,—not as they would have it, but as their European masters wanted it.

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The Vaiṣṇavas and the Ḉaktas, who had hitherto been at the helm of our literature, inspite of their occasional indulgence in ornamental style, always meant their works for readers who would understand them. But the great Sanskrit scholars, the Bhaṭṭāchāryyas, as the *Tol* pundits were called, had hitherto nothing to do with vernacular literature. They were now considered fit to write in the vernacular tongue on account of their proficiency in Sanskrit. Their classical accomplishments, however, proved an utter disqualification for the purpose.

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We have seen that the specimens of early Bengali prose that have come down to us were all written in simple language. They were generally used for the interpretation of the doctrines of particular creeds or of Sanskrit texts. So the writers found it expedient to adopt popular language.

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But the Bhaṭṭāchāryyas not accustomed to write Bengali showed the defects and faults of untrained hands. They affected a pedantic style which sounded strange to the Bengali ear. In their efforts to display their great learning they wrote in a ridiculous style which was difficult not only to foreign people but also even to Bengalis themselves. The pedantry of the old school of poetry, though sometimes carried to excess, had in it elements which suited the genius of our language. It was absurd in some places, but it was a natural though a peculiar growth. The pedantry of the Bhaṭṭāchāryyas on the other hand—the vollies of high sounding compounds that they poured out—were unbearable in our language. It was as if giants had been let loose; and the artistically decorated gardens, into which they had found entry, could ill bear their heavy and unwieldy tread. We quote here a few specimens of their style. The great Pundit Mrityunjaya of the Fort William College, whom Dr. Marshman compared to Johnson in all respects, wrote in his Pravodha Chandrikā.

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“কোকিল কলাপ বাচাল যে মলয়াচলনিল সে উচ্ছলচ্ছী-করাত্যচ্ছ নিঝরাস্তঃ কণাচ্ছন্ন হইয়া আসিতেছে।*

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In a translation of the Government Regulations and Laws entitled the Ādalata Timira Nāçana, by one Rāma Mohana Ray (he could not have possibly been the illustrious Rāma Mohana Roy) printed in 1828, we find a preliminary prayer in prose, addressed to God as follows:—

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†“বারংবার অপার জগদয়স্থিতিসংলয়াদি সাধারণকারণ মানস-বাক্পথাতীত পরমদ্ভুতবিবিধবিচিত্রচিন্তাতীত পরাৎপরানন্ত বৈভবানুক্ষণ বিস্তারক অবিরতাধ্যাত্মিকাদিবিধতাপকলাপ- কবলিত-বিকলিত-মানস-মানবসমূহনিস্তারক পরমকারুণিক মনু- জাওজ বিবিধস্থলচরজলচরাকাশচর কীটপতঙ্গাদিজীবকৃত

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∗ “The Malaya breeze, resounding with the warbles of the cuckoo, is becoming drenched with the transparent particles of the over-flowing sprays of water.”

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† “To him who is the cause of the creation, of the preservation and of the final dissolution of the universe which occurs again and again in cycles—who is beyond all comprehension and whom no language can express,—no thought however subtle can reach,—to Him who is the saviour of all men, ground down and distressed by Providential and physical and other evils, who is mercy itself and the one great equitable Judge of the deeds

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সতত সদসদ্বিচারক জগদেকনিয়ামক বিশ্বোপকারার্থ দিনকর-নিশাকরসংখ্যেয় তারকাদ্যনিশবিভ্রমকারক সদাচারনিরত সৰ্জ্জমানমোদক তৎকর্তৃক নিখিলকার্য্যানুষ্ঠা শ্রবণমননদ্বারা অকিঞ্চিৎস্বরূপভাসমাত্র রূপকাগিলাধ্যক্ষের প্রতি গণনাতিরিক্ত প্রণতিপূর্ব্বক বিশিষ্টশিষ্ট সদসদ্বিচারকমহাশয়সমূহ সমীপেষু বহুতর বিনয়পুরঃসর নিবেদন।”

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All this is a single sentence, which moreover is not yet complete; it appears like some monstrous sea-reptile coiling into a thousand folds and dragging itself to an appalling length.

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The author of “Praphulla Jnānanetra” is Içāna chandra Banerjee. This writer grievously errs in every sentence in spelling, yet poses as a great and erudite scholar. His address to Hare Kriṣṇa Addy in the dedication shows that, however inferior may be his qualifications, he desires to surprise the readers by his pedantry.

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Praphulla Jnāna-netra.

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“আপনকার সাহায্যতরণী কর্তৃক গভীর তিমির দুস্তার অজ্ঞানার্ণব হইতে নিস্তার পাইয়া”

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(which means,—‘being enabled to cross the illimitable and the deep sea of ignorance by the boat of thine help).’

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virtuous or otherwise of men, of the oviparous, acquatic, and amphibious animals, of worms and birds,—to Him who is the great law-maker of the universe, who for the good of the world created the moving celestial bodies—the sun, the moon and the innumerable stars, who observes all, and only a glimpse of whose attributes is obtained by our perception of sight, hearing etc.,—after offering numberless salutations to that great Master of the universe, next with humility and respect do I approach the benevolent judges of right and wrong with the prayer that—,”

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Sarvāmoda Tarangini.

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In "Sarvāmoda Tarangini" written in 1850,—a work expounding theistic principles, we find "সর্ব্বোপাস্য সর্ব্বশক্তিমান সর্ব্বান্তর্য্যামী সর্ব্বস্বামী সর্ব্বভূতের কর্তা পাতা বিধাতাকে সর্ব্বভাবে প্রণাম পূর্ব্বক সর্ব্বামোদতরঙ্গিণী নামক গ্রন্থ প্রকাশ করিতেছি।"

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Representative character lost

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The whole literature of the period abounds with such absurd instances of pedantry. They are specimens of composition by untrained hands. Those who were the natural leaders, so long acknowledged to be the masters of the vernacular style of composition,—at whose hands and by whose disinterested and self sacrificing labour Bengali literature had flourished and attained distinction,—the Vaiṣṇava and Çākta writers were ousted from the field, and in their place the Tol pundits, who knew nothing of our past literature, whose study was confined to Sanskrit, were called in to write Bengali books; the result was that their unwieldy style and its uncouth form struck a discordant note to the spirit of our language. Besides, the subject-matter which they chose was all upon the model of European books. This naturally failed to appeal to our masses unacquainted with the new spirit which was inspiring the authors of our modern prose. Modern literature thus lost that representative character which the yellow leaves of the old Mss. had so pre-eminently possessed. A foreign plant was, as it were, engrafted on an old tree and it required years for the graft to grow and become a true and living branch of our literature.

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and the link broken.

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The old school had been a homogeneous creation; one would hear the echoe of Vidyāpati, who died 400 years ago, in Bhārata Chandra who lived 250 years after. The choes of Chandi Dās's songs, sung 500 years ago, were traceable in the lays of the modern *kaviwala*; and the joys and sorrows, pain and pleasures, embodied in the Bengali literature extending over a period of 700 years worked in the minds of the whole Bengali race and found a ready response from every soul. The niceties and even the pedantry of our past literature proved no barrier, as I have said, to our masses in enjoying the productions of the artificial school of poetry which grew up under circumstances natural to the soil. But now the link was suddenly snapped. Our old literature was, as it were, walled up, and a new one substituted which the people found inaccessible to them, and thus Bengalis ceased for half a century to understand the written Bengali of this age,—a time required by the masses to train themselves up to the new style and to the new subject matter. Even now the works of some of our best modern poets, wrought in the simplest of terms, seem unintelligible to a large section of the people, because of the European ideas in them with which they are not familiar; and yet these readers can scale all the heights of the mystic metaphors of Bhārata Chandra and Ālāol.

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Persian scholars no less than Sanskrit-knowing pundits contributed their share towards making the style of modern prose in its early stages, cumbersome and corrupt to a degree; and we have found such specimens of writing in Rāma Rāma Vasu's Pratāpāditya printed at Çrirāmapore Press in 1800 A.D. Lipimālā or model letters by this author

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Admixture of Persian.

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shows a style which was in current use in the country for long years. The epistles on mercantile and state affairs show a greater preponderance of Persian words, whereas the correspondence of a domestic and personal nature and those on religious subjects were generally free from such admixture. The addresses to high personages contained stereotyped sentences which were full of corrupt Sanskrit words. The form seems to have come down from a very remote age. Here is a curious specimen of the usual form of one Rājā addressing another. We take the extract from the Lipimālā.

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Lipimālā.

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“রাজাধিরাজ হিন্দুস্থানমাঝ যাহা দর্পময় ক্ষমা অতিশয় সরলান্তকরণ রূপ হেমবরণ শক্তিমন্ত ধীর অতি মহাবীর আত্মলোকপাল বৈরীমর্দকাল শ্রীমান গুণধর মহারাজ রাজেশ্বর রাজচক্রবর্তীর সাহায্য লিপি লেখা যাইতেছে।”

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When Bengali literature had been thus placed in inexpert hands and committed to pedantic follies from which there seemed no way of its resuscitation, the European writers of Bengali cut a new channel of their own and made the style of vernacular prose flow into it; it was thus saved from the mazy and intricate paths of involved sentences and compound words in which it had entangled itself. The European writers naturally chose simple and short sentences and colloquial words and obliged the pundits to write in a similar style. However high a pundit might soar in the atmosphere of classical learning, he certainly knew the colloquial dialect of his country, though he had hitherto treated it with great contempt and had never thought of adopting it as a medium for literary composition. We find Dr.

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The colloquial style favoured by the Europeans.

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Carey employing Pundits to write a portion of his colloquies in Bengali, and even Mrityunjaya, the great scholar was made to introduce a colloquial style into his Pravodha Chandrikā. Side by side with his "উচ্ছলচ্ছিকরাত্যচ্ছ নিঝরাচ্ছ কণাচ্ছন্ন হইয়া আসিতেছে" we find:—

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* "স্ত্রী কহিল, গুড় হইলেই কি রাঁধা হয়? তৈল নাই, লুন নাই, চাউল নাই, তরকারী পাতি কিছুই নাই। কাঠগুলি সকলি ভিজা, বেসাতি বা কিরূপে হবে * * * কুটনা বা কে কুটিবে, বাটনা বা কে বাটিবে? তৎপতি কহিল, আজ কি ঘরে কিছুই নাই, দেখ দেখি খুদ কুঁড়া যদি কিছু থাকে, তবে তার পিঠা কর, এই গুড় দিয়া খাইব। ইহাতে তাহার স্ত্রী কহিল, বটে পিঠা করা বুঝি বড় সহজ? জান না, পিঠা আঠা; যেমন আঠা লাগিলে শীঘ্র ছাড়ে না, তেমনি পিঠার লেঠা বড় লেঠা, শীঘ্র ছাড়ে না। কখনো ত রাঁধিয়া খাও নাই। আর লোকদের মাউগের মতন মাউগ পাইয়া থাকিতে, তবে জানিতে।"

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The great Pundit Mrityunjaya, who could discourse on all the six systems of Hindu philosophy, would hardly have condescended to adopt the despised patois of the country and choose such an humble subject for treatment, had it not been set on him as a task by the European masters of Fort William College.

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∗ "The mistress of the house said 'Is molasses the only thing required for cooking? There is no oil, no salt, no rice, no vegetable of any kind: the fuel is wet. What about the spices? My son's wife is out of health and cannot work. Who will grind the spices and who prepare the vegetables? Her Lord said, 'Look closely; is nothing available in the house? See, woman, if you can find out some refuse rice and make cakes with it. We shall take them with molasses.' The mistress said, 'Indeed, is the preparation of cakes so simple then? They say that the making of cakes is like putting gum in the hands, if once it sticks, it takes a good deal of time to clean it off. Cake preparation takes much time and is full of trouble. You never cooked anything in your life, husband, therefore you speak so foolishly. Had you had an ordinary woman for your wife you would by this time, no doubt, have had much bitter experience.'"

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The European's Bengali.

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It was unavoidable that European's writing in Bengali would now and then commit mistakes of idiom. Instances of translating ‘গোপাল উড়ের যাত্রা’ as ‘the flying journey of Gopala’ and ‘বীচি বিক্ষেপ হইতেছিল না’ as ‘did not shed its seeds’ or ‘bad humours of the body’ as ‘শরীরের দুষ্ট রসিকতা’ and similar writings which would amuse every Bengali, abound in the prose writings of the foreign scholars; and if they had had occasion to cultivate our language with the earnestness with which we are acquiring English, it is certain that we should have had as ample materials at our command to amuse ourselves as the ridiculers of “Babu English” have at theirs.

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Errors in idioms.

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We find in the Sarasangraha by the Rev. Yates D. D, a very good scholar of Bengali, such lines as “ভ্রমণের দ্বারা তাহাদের মন প্রফুল্ল ও উত্তম হইতে পারে এবং অনেক অনেক বিবেচনার কথা উপস্থিত হইতে পারে.” The writer confounds চিন্তা with বিবেচনা in the last line. In a Bengali vocabulary the difference in meaning of the two words is not indicated; and it is only to be known by a mastery of the idiom, hence this writer fell into such an error.

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In a grammar of the Bengali language by the Rev. J. Keith, we find the following curious specimen:—

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নিত্যশুদ্ধ ভূতকাল।

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In Satguṇa O Viryyer Itihāsa written in 1829 by a Çrirampur missionary, we come across the following sentences on the title page:

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“ সকল লোকের হিতার্থে বাঙ্গালা ভাষায় তর্জমা করা গেল। তাহার একদিকে ইংরাজী ও এক দিকে বাঙ্গালা”।

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But inspite of these unavoidable defects met with now and then in the use of Bengali idioms, the vernacular style of the foreign writers commended itself generally for its simplicity, closeness of argument, and directness as contrasted with the high flown unmeaning jargons of scholarly pedants; and the latter had gradually to adopt the simpler style of the European which erred occasionally in idiom, but was, generally speaking, correct and elegant.

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The indirect benefit derived from the writing of vernacular works by Europeans was great, for they controlled Bengali prose; and though it was taken out of the hands of the Vaiṣṇavas and the Çāktas, it came once more to competent hands, who made it a vehicle of thought and not a show thing to be admired for artistic excellence or rendered too abstruse for popular understanding by pedantic follies.

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Europeans ceased to take the great interest in the vernacular literature as they had done in the first half of the 19th century, only when the native hand grew sufficiently strong to take up the work in right earnest, and this our country men ere long did, even beyond all expectations of their friendly patrons.

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The great zeal of the European writers of Bengali prose is evidenced by the fact that Mr. Felix Carey coined scientific and technical terms for writing on those subjects in Bengali. How far he succeeded in his attempt is not the question, but it shows the ardour of his soul in attempting to bring the vernacular language of Bengal up to the standard of the advanced languages of the world. In the descriptive catalogue of Bengali by the Rev. J. Long, we find the following reference to this fact,—"Goldsmith's History of England (Bengali translation of) came out in 1819. Pages 412, by Felix Carey, an able Bengali scholar, the history closes with the peace of Amiens in 1802. A useful glossary of technical and difficult words was appended, though some names are rendered curiously. Admiral of the Blue is Nilpatakādhyernava, Whig is Svātantra Pakṣapāti." "Haḍāvali or Anatomy by Carey. The glossary of the technical terms by the translator Felix Carey, a good Bengali scholar, is of use to translators."

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Books in colloquial style.

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Under European influence a taste for writing in the colloquial language came into considerable favour; and writings like Ālāler Gharer Dulāla and Hutum Pechār Naksā, which are usually supposed to be our first attempts at witty writing in the colloquial dialect, were preceded and anticipated in style by numerous works which served as models to Tek Chānd Ṭhākur and Kāli Prasanna Simha in later times. Some of these earlier works reached a high level of success and were very popular at one time. Nowhere in the whole range of colloquial literature of this epoch, do we find a better sample of style or display of naive humour, and of scathing satire than in the Nava Bābu Vilāsa or sketch of a modern Babu by Pramatha Nāth Ҫarmā, published in 1823. The Rev. J. Long in 1855 wrote

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The ablest satire of the time.

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of this book as "one of the ablest satires of the Calcutta Babu as he was thirty years ago. New editions of the work are constantly issuing from the press. The Babu is depicted as germinating, blossoming in flower, in fruit. The Babu under Guru Mahāçaya, under the Munsi, devoted to licentiousness and his lament for past folly. It is a kind of Hogarth's Rake's Prayers." The book was analysed at length in the Quarterly Friend of India, 1826.

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I quote below an extract from this book. There is no need for any comment on the corrupt taste which prevails in it—which was the vice of the age and the spirit of the time.

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* "Then came dancing girls—three or four parties of them—a glorious band,—those who generally appear in the foremost row of a marriage procession and, riding on Taktāramā (a state palkee), dance to the admiration of the on-lookers. When all had joined the party, the Babu with his Chādar on his neck, as a sign of humility, and with clasped palms, addressed Baknā Piary and other dancing girls,—the best of their kind, reputed far and wide, and worshipped by the public, and said

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* "আর যাহারা বিবাহাদি সময় রাস্তায় সর্ব্বাগ্রে তক্তারামায় আরোহণ করিয়া নৃত্য করে, এমত নর্ত্তকী প্রায় তিন চার সম্প্রদা আইল; তৎপরে সকলের আগমনান্তর বাবু জনসমাজ পূজ্যা বারাঙ্গনাগণণ্যা বক্‌না পেয়ারী প্রভৃতির নিকট গললগ্নকৃতবাস হইয়া করপুটে কহিলেন "আপনারা স্নান করুন" তৎপরে অন্য ভক্তগণ আসিয়া বাবুর আজ্ঞামত আতর মৰ্দ্দন করাইলেক, কাঁচা-গোল্লা দিয়া মাথা ঘসাইয়া দিলেক, নির্ম্মল পুষ্করিণীর জল ক্রীড়াচ্ছলে কুতূহলে ভৃত্যগণের বহুসমাদরে ভক্তগণেরা গোলাপ জলে শরীর ধৌত করাইলেক। সেই সময়ে এক গাটি বস্ত্র

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“Be pleased now to take a bath.” The other admirers of these fair creatures appeared on the scene and at the request of the Babu rubbed perfumes on their delicate persons, and with Kāñchāgolla (a rich pudding) cleaned their long black hair; the servants with a feeling of great reverence took them to tanks, and in a sportive spirit poured water upon their heads, and then come the admirers who bathed them with rose-water. At this stage the tailor came and produced a bundle of fine clothes. There were in the bundle beautiful Sāḍies made by the far-famed weavers of Ṣāntipur, Amvikā, Vādāgāchhi, Dacca, Chandrakonā, Khāsvāgān and other places. Some of these fine stuffs had beautiful borders in imitation of Kashmir shawls, others with borders in which the figures of crabs were neatly woven with the threads, and others where the amulet was imitated. These elegant borders were of different colours, purple, blue and crimson. The Barānagar striped Sāḍies looked particularly gay. These clothes were distributed by the tailor among the worthy votaries of the terpsichorean art. Then in the pleasure garden the Babu and his friends seated themselves on costly seats with the accomplished

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The reception to the dancing girls.

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আনিয়া উপস্থিত করিলেন। শান্তিপুর অম্বিকা, বাদাগাছি ঢাকা, চন্দ্রকোণা, খাসবাগান, বরাহনগর প্রভৃতি নানা স্থানের শড়ী, শালশড়ী, কাঁকড়াপেড়ে, লালপেড়ে, নীলপেড়ে, তাবিজ-পেড়ে, বরাহনগরের, দুরে ব্যক্তিবিশেষে ২ প্রদান করিলেন। তৎপরে আনন্দকাননে অপূর্ব্বাসনে সর্ব্বজন প্রফুল্ল বদনে বেশ্যাসন্নিধানে উপবিষ্ট হইলেন, সেই আসনে ভৃত্যগণেরা নানাবিধ সুখাদ্য মিষ্টান্ন মদ্য মাংস আনিয়া প্রস্তুত করিলেক; ইতিমধ্যে এক নির্ব্বোধ পূর্ব্বদেশীয় বাঙ্গাল ব্রাহ্মণ কহিলেক, যে ভোজন কালে পৃথক পৃথক স্থানে করিতে হইবে। এমন সময়ে খলিফার কুলপুরোহিত hirelings. The servants brought to them various kinds of sweetmeats, meat and wine in profuse quantities, when a fool of an East Bengal Brahmin said that there should be separate seats at dinner. Hearing this the high priest of the Babu—the jewel of the forehead of all *pandits*—stepped forward and said ‘O thou the most despised of all mortals, dost thou not know the sacred books, dunce and illiterate as thou art? This is a Bhairavi *chakra* (a circle of the Tantricks), as people of various castes are present here and women have joined us. In a Bhairavi *chakra* no caste distinction should be observed. You want authority! Here it is :—

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Recites a Sanskrit couplet here which means ;—

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‘Those who join a Bhairavi *chakra*, whatever caste they may belong to, should be considered for the time as the best of Brahmins. They should all drink wine, till they turn tipsy and reeling fall to the ground and rise to drink again. If they do so they shall be free from all future births and attain final emancipation.’

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“When authority had thus been quoted all were quite satisfied and the Hindus, Mahomedans and

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শিরোমণি কহিলেন “ওরে নরাধম মূর্খ শাস্ত্র জানিলি না, এক্ষণে এস্থল ভৈরবৗ চক্র বলা যায়, ভৈরবৗ চক্রে জাতিবিচার নাই। প্রমাণং যথা—

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‘আগতা ভৈরবৗচক্রে সর্ব্বে বর্ণাঃ দ্বিজোত্তমাঃ
পীত্বা পীত্বা পুনঃ পীত্বা পুনঃ পততি ভূতলে
উত্থায় চ পুনঃ পীত্বা পুনর্জন্ম ন বিদ্যতে’

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ইত্যাদি প্রমাণ শুনিয়া সকলে হৃষ্টচিত্ত হইল। হিন্দু মুছলমান women of ill fame sat together with a clear conscience, and began to eat various preparations of meat and other dainties with profuse quantity of wine."

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A Serio-comic aspect.

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The *Pandits* took up Bengali prose under the direction of European writers of Bengali; and under their direction also the former had to come down from high flown bombasts to colloquial simplicity. The best works produced by the *Pandits* during this epoch of our literature are characterised, on the one hand, by ascent to obscure heights and, on the other, by descent to slang;—from the cloudy region of philosophical dissertations to the housewife's harangue with her husband on the question of the preparation of cakes. There was no *via media*. When the theme soared high, it became mystic,—the phalanx of compound words scarcely left a loop-hole for the ordinary reader's understanding to penetrate into it; but when it came down from these heights it grovelled in the mire of vulgarity; street scenes were described in terse, forcible but exceedingly corrupt style; all limits of decency were exceeded on,—coarse and flat jokes passed for humour, and the Bengali prose of the period presented a seriocomic aspect which puzzles us in its seriousness and almost repels when it tries to amuse.

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The good result.

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But the advent of the *Pandits* into the field of Bengali, though associated in the earlier stages of its modern prose with uncouth efforts verging on বেশ্যা সাধারণ তাবতেই নির্ম্মলান্তঃকরণে একাসনে বিবিধ মদ্য মাংস প্রভৃতি নানা দ্রব্য ভোজন করিলেন।”

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Babuvilas, Page 38.

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the ridiculous, was not an unmixed evil. Their productions materially aided the cause of Bengali style in the long run. The *pundits* had a perfect command over the Sanskrit vocabulary and Sanskrit grammar and aimed at a pure grammatical style which was gradually introduced into Bengali prose, mainly through their influence and by their writings. Under the salutary control of the European scholars these *pundits* were trained to write in a simple style and they no longer despised the colloquial dialect from which they gradually imported a large number of simple and elegant expressions into the written language. Modern prose was developed both in purity of style and in resources of words by the efforts of these scholarly writers, and abundant proofs of this are to be found in the standard works of the 19th century, written by them. In the prose works of Içvara Chandra Vidyāsāgara we have that crowning success in prose composition to attain which the *pundits* had been struggling for half a century. The high sounding compounds were reduced in his writings to simpler and more elegant forms, the coarse and the vulgar element was entirely eliminated; and living at this distance of time, as we do, we cannot help being struck with the inimitable grace and purity of his style. He saved our prose alike from pedantry and vulgarity and adopted a golden mean which only a finished master of Sanskrit and gifted literature could have been capable of achieving.

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The printing of Bengali books was a costly affair in those days. We have seen that Dr. Carey calculated the cost of printing ten thousand copies of the Bengali New Testament at Rs. 43750, and

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The high price of printed books.

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that even, at the wrong estimate of the cost of a punch as 5s. whereas it was really a guinea. Considering the enormous expenditure on printing as also the very limited sale of Bengali books, we should not be surprised at the high price set on many of the books of this period; for instance Mitter's Bengali Dictionary was published in 1801, "equal to an 8vo of 50 pages"; the price was Rs. 32. Tara Chand Chakravarty's Anglo Bengali Dictionary; pages 25, price Rs. 6. "The original price of Kriṣṇa Chandra Charita by Rajiva Lochana Rs. 5 only for 120 pages. It barely paid its expenses then, so limited was the demand for Bengali books."

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Journals edited by students.

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The energetic devotion displayed in the cause of learning by the students of the Hindu College under the influence of Dr. Richardson and Mr. D'Rozario is evidenced in the list of Bengali newspapers and magazines of this period already given on a foregoing page. Along with a hundred other channels into which that energy flowed for promoting the cause of learning, no less than four journals (Nos. 13, 19 pp. 908-909 and Nos. 10 and 17 p. 911,) were edited and conducted by the students of the Hindu College.

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The excellence of the Hindu method in arithmetic.

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It is curious to observe that when the English were introducing European educational methods into our schools, they were frequently struck with the excellence of the Hindu method of teaching already current in our Pāthaçālās, and this they freely admitted. An English writer in the London Asiatic journal, 1817, bestows a high panegyric on the arithmetical rules set to doggerel rhymes by Çubhankara who is said to have been "the Cocker of The provided image is completely blank (white). There is no text to transcribe.

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[Figure: RAJA RAMA MOHANA ROY. Specially photographed for Mr. Ramananda Chatterjee from the oil painting in British Museum. By kind permission of Mr. R. N. Chatterjee.]

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Bengal." " These rules" wrote another English reviewer in the middle of the 19th century "have been chanted for 150 years in 40,000 schools. Thus the Hindus took the lead in a practice which have been since introduced into our infant schools." In the May-Gaṇita printed at Çrīrāmapore in 1817, the author, Mr. May, says of the Çubhankari Aryyās in his preface to the book :—" It is remarkable that many coincidences may be traced between them and the most improved kind of arithmetical tables adopted in the schools in Britain on the new model."

Cites (1)

Prabodhacandrikā — Mṛtyuñjay 1788, Bengali