Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/1004

The Raia’s work in Bengali prose. 958 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. ter to a real need of society. It may be that the enlightened people of Bengal would without him have been drawn more irrevocably to Christianity, being dissatisfied with the existing state of their religion. The spirit of the Raja not only domin- ates the Brahmo Samaja of to-day, but his influence is distinctly traceable in the general a wakening of the Hindu mind to a consciousness of new ideals in the spiritual world. This great man approached his countrymen through the vehicle of his mother tongue. Before Rama Mohana the prose literature that existed was of very minor importance. The Europeans had already set themselves to the task of compiling Bengali Grammar and vocabularies. They had begun to translate the Gospel, and those placed at the head of the judicial administration had found it expedient to translate the Laws and Regulations into the vernacular. There was a general activity in Bengal among an enlightened though limited circle of men to contribute to our prose literature—an activity which as I have said in a foregoing chapter, was largely due to the ener- getic efforts of missionaries in bringing home to the people the truths of the Bible, as also to their sincere desire to promcte the condition of our countrymen by a diffusion of western education. Rama Mohana Roy is generally known as the father of the Bengali prose; but we have seen that some of the earliest writings in Bengali, composed in the roth century A.D, were in prose. Small and even large treatises were written in simple Bengali ‘The father prose before the advent of the Europeans. The of Bengali prose,’ assertion of ‘‘ fatherhood” therefore can not be