Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c5.3

c5.3

¹ It should be noted that the authenticity of many of the East Bengal ballads, as compiled by Dr. D. C. Sen, D. Litt., in collaboration with Candra Kumar De and some other assistants and published by the University of Calcutta, has been questioned. We have no scope here to enter into the details of the controversy; but our considered opinion on the point is that though the ballads may not belong to a hoary past (as Dr. Sen holds), and though there may be some handling of the verses at the time of collection and compilation, at least the skeleton of some of these verses surely belongs to the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries and some go even earlier.