Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c12.s10.6

c12.s10.6

The efforts of the rulers of Bengal were not confined to the promotion of Muhammadan learning alone, for they also directed their fostering care for the advancement of letters into a new channel, which is of particular interest to the Bengali-speaking people. It may seem to them an anomaly that their language should owe its elevation to a literary status not to themselves but to the Muhammadans, whose interest in it was at first evoked by merely a sense of the curious, and was indirectly roused by its connection with Sanskrit, which formed a most cherished treasure of the vast Hindu population with whom they had to come into frequent contact. It was the epics—the *Ramāyāṇa* and the *Mahābhārata*—that first attracted the notice of the Muhammadan rulers of Bengal, at whose instance they were translated into Bengali—the language of their domicile. The first Bengali rendering of the *Mahābhārata* was ordered by Nāṣir Ṣhāh of Bengal (1282-1325 A.D.), who was a great patron of the vernacular of the province, and whom the great poet Vidyāpati has immortalized by dedicating to him one of his songs. Vidyāpati also makes a respectful reference to Sulṭān Ghiyāṣuddīn, most probably Sulṭān Ghiyāṣuddīn II