Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/313

IV.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 277 of Backergunge in 1896, contains 232 pages (royal octavo.) printed in double columns. — It contains 15,000 lines and exceeds Milton’s Paradise lost by half its bulk. Many of the other works referred to above are equally voluminous. Some of them contain graphic accounts of the sea voyage of Chand Sadagara and descriptions of the manner in which commercial enterprises were undertaken by the Bengalis in ancient times, with 10- cidental references to the fourishing condition of Bengal and her industry. The geographical notices of places, the names of which are to be found in many of these works, bear witness to the changes constantly brought about in the plains of the Gangetic valley by its ever-shifting river courses. The earliest writer on Manasa Devi in Bengal was Hari Datta, who was blind of one eye. We have come across only 20 lines of his composi- tion. They describe the ornaments made of snakes which decorated the person of Manasa Devi. Hari Datta was born in the district of Mymensingh and probably lived in the 12th century. We _ have come across a description of him in a later poem written by Vijay Gupta in honour of Manasa Devi. Manasa Devi is said to have appeared before Vijay Gupta in a dream and said :— “An illiterate man first wrote a poem in my honour; but he had no idea of my power and glory. He was Hari_Datta, the one-eyed. His irregular and metreless doggerel became ob- solete and were lost in course of time. His words were vulgar, his lines did not rhyme and his songs Hari Datta the earliest writer of these songs. The defects of his poems,