Bengali poets of the 18th century. The Court of Nadiya, 18th cen tury. Bharat Chandra Rái. but the fiery quarrels and heroic spirit of the Sanskrit original lose much in the Bengalí translation. The 18th century produced two great Bengali poets. In 1720, Rám Prasád Sen, of the Vaidya caste, was born in Nadiya District. Sent at an early age as clerk to a Calcutta office, he scribbled verses when he should have been casting up accounts, and was reported for punishment by the chief clerk. The head of the business read the rhymes, dismissed the poet, but assigned to him a pension of Rs. 30 a month. With this he retired to his native village, and wrote poetry for the rest of his life. Rám Prasad was a devout Tantrik or worshipper of the wife of Siva, and his poems consist chiefly of appeals to the goddess under her various names of Kálí, Sakti, etc. His songs, however, are more often complaints of her cruelty than thanksgivings for her mercies.1 The little Hindu court of Nadiyá then formed the centre of learning and literature in Bengal, and the Rájá endowed Rám Prasád with 33 acres of rent-free land. The grateful poet in return dedicated to the prince his Kabiranjan, or version of the tale of Bidya Sundar. The fame of this version has, however, been eclipsed by the rendering of the same story by a rival poet Bharat Chandra. Two other well-known works, the Káli Kirtan and the Krishna Kirtan, in honour respectively of Kálí and Krishna, with many minor poems, have also come down from the pen of Rám Prasád. The other great Bengal poet of the 18th century was Bhárat Chandra Rái, who died 1760. The son of a petty Rájá, he was driven from his home by the oppressions of the Rájá of Bardwán, and after many adventures and imprisonment, obtained the protection of the chief native officer of the French Settlement at Chandarnagar. The generosity of the Rájá of Nadiyá 2 afterwards raised him to comfort, and he devoted his life to three principal poems. His version of the Bidya Sundar is a passionate love poem, and remains the accepted rendering of that tale to the present day. The goddess Kálí interposes at the end to save the life of the frail heroine. His other two principal poems, the Annadá Mangal and the Mánsinha, form continuations of the same work; and, like it, are devoted to the glorification of the queen of Siva under her various names. With the printing press, and the Anglo-Indian School, arose. RECENT BENGALI LITERATURE. 353 a generation of Bengalís whose chief ambition is to live by the Recent pen. The majority find their career in official, mercantile, or Bengali literature, professional employment. But a large residue become writers 19th cenof books; and Bengal is at present passing through a grand tury. literary climacteric. Nearly 1300 works per annum are published in the vernacular languages of Lower Bengal alone. It is an invidious task to attempt to single out the most distinguished authors of our own day. Amid such a climax of literary activity, much inferior work is produced. But it is not too much to say that in poetry, philosophy, science, the novel and the drama, Bengalí literature has, in this century, produced masterpieces without rivals in its previous history. In two departments it has struck out entirely new lines. Bengali prose practically dates from Rám Mohan Rái; and Bengalí journalism is essentially the creation of the third quarter of the present century.1 century. As Bengalí poetry owed its rise in the 14th century, and its Bengali fresh impulse in the 16th, to outbursts of religious song; so prose, 19th Bengalí prose is the offspring of the religious movement headed by the Rájá Rám Mohan Rái in the 19th. This great theistic reformer felt that his doctrines and arguments required a more serious vehicle than verse. When he died in 1833, he at once received the position of the father of Bengalí prose,a position which he still enjoys in the grateful memories of his countrymen. Of scarcely less importance, however, in the creation of a good prose style, were two rival authors born in 1820. Akkhai Kumár Datta enforced the theistic doctrines of the Brahma Samáj with indefatigable ability in his religious journal, the Tatwabodhini Patriká. Reprints of his articles still rank as text-books of standard Bengalí prose. Iswar Chandra Vidyaságar, also born in 1820, devoted himself to social reform upon orthodox Hindu lines. The enforced celibacy of widows, and the abuses of polygamy, have formed the subject of his life-long attacks. An older worker, Iswar Chandra Gupta, born 1809, took the lead in the modern popular poetry of Bengal. His fame has 1 From no list of 19th century Bengali authors should the following names be omitted:-Rám Mohan Rái, Akkhai Kumár Datta, Iswar Chandra Vidyaságar, Iswar Chandra Gupta, Madhu Sudan Datta, Hem Chandra Banarji, Bankim Chandra Chattarjí, Dino Bandhu Mitra, and Nabin Chandra Sen. 2 Rájá Rám Mohan Rái (Rammohun Roy) is also well known for his English works, of which it is pleasant to record that a collected reprint is now appearing under the editorship of Babu Gogendra Chandra Ghose, M.A. (Calcutta, 1885). Modern Bengali poets, 19th century. been eclipsed, however, by Madhu Sudan Datta, born 1828, who now ranks higher in the estimation of his countrymen than any Bengalí poet of this or any previous age. Madhu Sudan's epic, the Meghnád Badh Kábya, is reckoned by Bengali critics as second only to the masterpieces of Valmiki, Kálidása, Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare. This generous appreciation is characteristic of the catholic spirit of Hinduism. For Madhu Sudan Datta became a Christian, lectured as proSudan fessor in a Christian college, went to England, and returned to Datta, 1828-1875. Bengal only to die, after a too brief career, in 1875. His epic relates the death of Meghnad or Indrajít, greatest of the sons of Ravana, and takes its materials from the well-known episode in the Rámáyana. Among Bengali poets still living, Hem Chandra Banarji occupies perhaps the highest place of honour. Madhu The The mean chapter. In the Bengalí drama, Dina Bandhu Mitra, born 1829, died 1873, led the way. His first and greatest work, the Nil Darpan or Mirror of Indigo, startled the community by its picture of the abuses of indigo planting a quarter of a century ago. It was translated into English by the well-known missionary and philanthropist, the Rev. James Long; and formed the ground of an action for libel, ending in the fine and imprisonment of the latter gentleman. In prose fiction, Bunkim Chandra Chattarjí, born 1838, ranks first. The Bengali novel is essentially a creation of the last half century, and the Durgesh Nandini of this author has never been surpassed. But many new novelists, dramatists, and poets are now establishing their reputation in Bengal; and the force of the literary impulse given by the State School and the printing press seems still unabated. It is much to be regretted that so little of that intellectual activity has flowed into the channels of biography and critical history. This chapter has dealt at some length with the vernacular literature of India, because a right understanding of that literature is necessary for the comprehension of the chapters which follow. It concludes the part of the present book which treats of the struggle for India by the Asiatic races. In the next chapter the European nations come upon the scene. How they strove among themselves for the mastery will be briefly narrated. The conquest of India by any one of them formed a problem whose magnitude not one of them appreciated. The Portuguese spent the military resources of their country, and the religious enthusiasm of their Church, in the vain RECENT BENGALI FICTION. 355 on the attempt to establish an Indian dominion by the Inquisition and Assaults the Sword. This chapter has shown the strength and the indigenous extent of the indigenous civilisation which they thus ignorantly civilisation of India. and unsuccessfully strove to overthrow. The Indian races had themselves confronted the problems for which the Portuguese attempted to supply solutions from without. One religious movement after another had swept across India; one philosophical school after another had presented its explanation of human existence and its hypothesis of a future life. A popular literature had sprung up in every Province. The Portuguese attempt to uproot these native growths, and to forcibly plant in their place an exotic civilisation and an exotic creed, was foredoomed to failure. From any such attempt the Dutch and the French wisely abstained. One secret of the success of the British power has been its English non-interference with the customs and the religions of the people. non-interference. India. Gama, 1498. CHAPTER XIV. EARLY EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS (1498 TO 18TH CENTURY A.D.). The Portu- THE Muhammadan invaders of India had entered from the guese in north-west. Her Christian conquerors approached by sea from the south. From the time of Alexander to that of Vasco da Gama, Europe held little direct intercourse with the East. An occasional traveller brought back stories of powerful kingdoms and of untold wealth; but the passage by sea was scarcely dreamed of, and by land, wide deserts and warlike tribes lay between. Commerce, indeed, struggled overland and via the Red Sea; being carried on chiefly by the Italian cities on the Mediterranean, which traded to the ports of the Levant.1 But to the Europeans of the 15th century, India was an unknown land, which powerfully attracted the imagination of spirits stimulated 1 The following is a list of the most noteworthy early travellers to the East, from the 9th century to the establishment of the Portuguese as a conquering power in India in the 16th. The Arab geographers will be found in Sir Henry Elliot's first volumes of the Indian Historians. The standard European authority is The Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian, edited by Colonel Henry Yule, C. B., 2 vols., second edition, 1875. The author's best thanks are due to Colonel Yule for the assistance he has kindly afforded both here and in those articles of The Imperial Gazetteer of India, which came within the scope of Colonel Yule's researches. The authorities for the more ancient travellers and Indian geographers are, as already stated, M'Crindle's Megasthenes and Arrian, his Ktesias, and his Navigation of the Erythræan Sea, which originally appeared in the Indian Antiquary, and were republished by Messrs. Trübner. The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, by Dr. William Vincent, Dean of Westminster (2 vols. quarto, 1807), may still be perused with interest, although Dr. Vincent's materials have been supplemented by fuller and more accurate knowledge. 883 A.D. King Alfred sends Sighelm of Sherburn to the shrine of Saint Thomas in India.' The site of the shrine is doubtful, see chap. ix. 851-916. Suláimán and Abu Zaid, whose travels furnished the Relations of Reinaud. 912-30. The geographer Mas'udi. 1159-73. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela; visited Persian Gulf, reported on India. 1260-71. The brothers Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, father and uncle of Marco Polo; make their first trading venture through Central Asia. |