Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/1009

VII. ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 963 learned, to have reduced such great and abs- truse truths to pristine simplicity in a language which as yet was so inadequate to the purpose as our own. It was possible for the Raja to do so only because he was a himself a seer of these truths like the great sages—the Risis of the past. His controversies similarly display his great powers, his logical acumen, and his vast classical erudition.~ He gives precedence to reason in every step of his arguments ; and it is the light of his own soul that he brings forward, in order to dispel the darkness of superstition and ignorance that prevails all round. Nowhere does he make his motive pro- minent. He brings forward a whole array of texts from Sanskrit, Hebrew, Persian and Arabic in favour of what he advocates, so that while arguing with a Maulvi he seems to be himself a Maulvi, with a missionary, he appears to be a Christian, and before a Bhattacharyya he comes in the garb of the Brahmin that he was. While holding a controversy with a Mahomedan, the Raja quotes from the Koran, with a Hindu from the Castras, and with a Christian from the Bible. He does not decry even the most obvious evils on his own au- thority, but he brings his whole learning to bear upon each topic; and the quotations he makes are of an overwhelming nature and display his minute knowledge of the different theological systems of the world. This power of keeping his personal opinions in the back ground and advancing them merely on the authority admitted by his anta- gonists, required a colossal range of studies which in his age oniy Rama Mohana Roy possessed. This accounts for his unique position and his