As the genius of a Chaucer gave to English poetry a new quality, so that of a Chandi Das arrived to quicken the poetry of Bengal. True, the two poets and their different ways of writing seem almost to belong to different planets. The Indian poet, like the English, writes of love, and he has his stock of legendary and romantic allusions; but his songs are strung on the devotee's sacred thread; we have no "Prologue" with a religious pilgrimage serving as excuse for the humour of the road. However when we try to make our picture of Bengal, we can learn much from Chandi Das. We cannot forget how he outraged the Brahmins by saying that the lovely washerwoman, Rāmi (her calling does not sound, alas! quite the same in English), was as holy in his eyes as the sacred hymn of Gayatri, mother of the Vedas. But he meant it really, ideally, and without thought of extravagance.
Chandi Das has a local tie that connects him with Rabindranath; in early life he settled at the village of Naunura, ten miles south-east of Bolpur. In Eastern Bengal a man of uncommon faculty is sometimes called a "mad Chandi," but the epithet is one that has an
