History of Bengali Language and Literature c11.s2.4

c11.s2.4

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.