Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/117

108 life'of babu shyama churn sibkab. Legislative Council, and Mr. Montriou of the Calcutta Bar fought tooth and nail for the bestowal of this ap- pointment upon Shyama Churn. He held this appoint- ment in 1873, and as the result of his learned disquisi- tion on Mahomedan Law of Inheritance for the Sunni and Skia sects respectively) he published two big Volumes of his learned lectures on that subject. CHAPTER IV. HIS LITERARY WORKS. In those days of the pre-University~period, when education was in its infancy, and when there was no stimulus or demand for books prepared by native scholars, it was not to be expected of Babu Shyama Churn that he should devote his time solely to writing books. He had to work his way up after a great struggle, and not being master of his own time , he had not the learned leisure for too many literary works. While he was a tutor or a fMunshi) in the Fort William College, he wrote in 1840 we believe, at the request of Mr. E. T. Marshall, the then Sec- retary to the said College, an Anglo- Bengali Grammar entitled " Introduction to the Bengali Language " for the use of the civilian students of Bengal who sadly stood in need of such a book.. To quote the words of the author in his first preface to the book u the work contains a Grammar not only of the Bengali but of those words of the Sanskrit and other languages already in use, and capable of being used in Bengali, with copious notes explanatory of idiomatic niceties, and the proper application of words." For this work, he got a reward of Rs. 1000 from the Government. It was at this time that the venerable Pundit Ishur Chun- der Vidyasagur published his "Betal Puncha Bingshatt* fof the Use of these civilians studying in the Fort William Collegei Calcutta. His next work "Gram*