Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature c5.7

c5.7

Bengali, along with other modern Indo-Aryan languages, grew up with the tenets of some minor religious sects, which rose mostly outside the circle of the high class people and were characterised by a general tendency of protest against current orthodox religious systems. These religious movements were sponsored by people who had no aristocracy of descent or advantage of culture and education; they rose from among the most common run of people and preached their doctrines among the masses in their own tongue. The modern Indo-Aryan literatures, as we have indicated in the preface, are, therefore, essentially mass-literature, and the religions preached through them represent the mass-religions of India. But this religious zeal of the masses has been responsible for the copious growth of the vernacular literature in spite of the derision and opposition of the higher communities, who sometimes threatened these revolutionaries with curses of hell.