intelligent criticism. The educated Bengali fails in this department almost as much as the antiquated pundit, in consequence no doubt of deficient culture.
Those who are familiar with the present writers in Bengali, will readily admit that they all, good and bad alike, may be classed under two heads, the Sanskrit and the English schools. The former represents Sanskrit scholarship and the ancient literature of the country; the latter is the fruit of Western knowledge and ideas. By far the greater number of Bengali writers belong to the Sanskrit school; but by far the greater number of good writers belong to the other.
It may be said that there is not at the present day anything like an indigenous school of writers, owing nothing either to Sanskrit writers or to those of Europe. The Sanskrit school takes for its models the later Sanskrit writers, and they are remarkably deficient in originality. The greater originality of the writers of the English school is the point in which their superiority to the Sanskrit school is most marked. It is characteristic of the Sanskrit school that they seldom venture on original composition. Even Vidyásâgar’s ambition soars no higher than adaptations, and a few translations. When they do venture on original composition, they are rarely caught straying beyond the beaten track, beyond a reverential repetition of things which have been said over and over again from time immemorial. If love is to be the theme, Madana is invariably put into requisition with his five flower-tipped arrows; and the tyrannical king of Spring never fails to come to fight in his cause, with his army of bees, and soft breezes, and other ancient accompaniments. Are the pangs of separation to be sung? The moon is immediately cursed and anathematized, as scorching the poor victim with her cold beams. The Kokila is described as singing him to destruction; and bees and soft breezes and sweet flowers are enumerated in the order in which they were marshalled in prehistoric times. No lovely woman in the pages of these writers has any other form of loveliness than a moon face, lotus eyes, hair that is a cloud, and a nose that resembles Garuda’s beak.
In point of style these writers hardly shine more than in ideas. Time-honoured phrases are alone employed; and a dull pompous array of high-sounding Sanskrit words continues to grate on the ear in perpetual recurrence. Anything which bears the mark of foreign origin, however expressive or necessary it may be, is jealously excluded.
It was reserved to Tekchánd Thakur to deal the first blow to this insufferable pedantry, and all honour to the man who did it. Endowed as he was with strong common sense as well as high culture, he saw no reason why this idol of unmixed
