Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c5.1

c5.1

The origin and growth of the modern Indian literatures (we mean the modern Indo-Aryan literatures) are closely associated with the origin and growth of some religious sects, which began to stir the life of the people from about the tenth century onwards. Up till the advent of the nineteenth century with a new outlook on life and literature, none of the Indo-Aryan literatures seem to have had the capacity to stand erect without the prop of some religious view, and this again seems to be particularly the case with Bengali. We have no type of literature in Bengali even corresponding to the *Rāsau* literature (literature based on the annals of heroic episodes) of Hindi, and poets like Cānd Bardāi or Bhūṣaṇ and Lāl are almost unknown in old and mediaeval Bengali. In our old and mediaeval¹ literature man's glory is seldom depicted in its own grandeur and eulogised independently of divine glory. The versions of the *Rāmāyaṇa* and the *Mahābhārata* that we have in our literature possess a vein more religious than human; the heroes and heroines of the various Maṅgala-kāvyas are depicted more as toys in the hands of the gods and goddesses than as dignified figures glowing with the heroic grandeur of their personality. Lāusen of the Dharma-maṅgalas is a mere agent of the Dharma-ṭhākura, Kālaketu of the Caṇḍī-maṅgalas is originally a god, being the son of Indra, and is dragged down from heaven on earth only to glorify the almighty power of goddess Caṇḍī and to establish her worship on earth. The human interest of the life-long struggle of Cānd Sadāgar of the Manasā-maṅgalas has been minimised by the undercurrent of the religious tone—by the fact that it really represents the struggle of decaying Śaivism of Bengal against the growth and spread of Śāktaism represented by the Manasā cult. During the long period, beginning with the Caryā-padas of the tenth, eleventh or twelfth century, the only type of literature that may be said to be free from the influence of religion, is the ballad literature of Bengal dealing purely and simply with the diversified life of rural Bengal and pastoral love-episodes.¹