1006 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. oem
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Mahabharata, written about three centuries ago, haves been received not only from Chittagong, Noakhali, Dacca, Mymensing, Tippara, and Sylhet, but also from various parts of Western Bengal. We have with us an old manuscript of the poem recovered from the village of Khalisani, near French Chan- darnagar, and several others are to be found in the library of Babu Nagendra Nath Vasu, obtained by him from Patrasayer and other villages of Birbhum. A manuscript of this poem about 200 years old was collected by the late Mr. Umesh Chandra Batabyal from a village inthe district of Rangpur. We may conceive from all this how extensively popular Kabindra’s Mahabharata was in 0795০ days. Amongst the older recensionists of the Mahabharata, the influence of Kabindra Paramegvara_ was the greatest on Nityananda and Kagi Das—the two great luminaries who have enlightened our masses on the beauties of the classical epic in comparatively recent times. There is a host of other early Eastern Bengal poets on the subject of the Mahabharata whose works will be found men- tioned in the body of this book. Krittibasa, the earliest writer of the Ramayana, got his education in Eastern Bengal, somewhere on the banks of the Padma, as he has himself in- formed us, in his auto-biography. His ancestors had belonged to Vikramapur, and the family were driven to Phulia by the oppression of Tugral Khan in the year 1348. Sasthibar and Gangadas, whose poems have been already mentioned here in connecttion with Manasa-literature, wrote ela- borate works on the Ramayana and the Maha-
