Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/600

The padas breathe a spirit of freedom, The advan- tages of adopting Brajabuli. The pada- kartas pre- fer Prakri- ta forms. 560 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [Chap. writers who were always aiming at classical figures of speech. Here we find classical figures only occasionally, but more often the poets hit upon common-place objects and translate them into apt and happy similes. Thestyle of the best amongst the pada kartas is free from all slavish imitation of Sanskrit models and is full of appropriate homely words and happy turns of expression taken from common life which discovers the innate strength of our language. By adopting the Braja Buh, the pada kartas not only made their language a fitter vehicle of tender thought, but gave scope for contributions to this literature by poets out-side Bengal. Hence it is that we find the songs of Champatipati, a poet of southern India and of Madhavi and Rama Rai, who belonged to Orissa, collected in Bengali compilation of songs. These Brajabuli than Bengali, as the former had in ita profuse ad- mixture of Hindi which people of all parts of . poets found it easier to adopt India spoke and understood. In an earlier chapter of our history we have noticed that rustic songs such as Manik Chandra Rajar gan were full of common place words taken from life. The writers of these songs could not use Sanskritic expressions simply because they were illiterate ; but the /ada literature of the Vaisnavas abounds, as | have already said, in loose Prakrita forms—not as a result of ignorance of Sanskrit, for these poets were almost all Sanskrit scholars, but because they had a finer power of perception as compared with the poets of the Sanskritic school and knew better than they, that the poetic vision must be supplied from life and not from