Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/719

VI, } | BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 679 Il. (a) The Court of Raja Rajavallabha in Dacca, Its poets—Jaya Narayana Sen—Anandamoyi Devi. Under court influence poetry became debased ; though it is true that a few exquisite poetic touches might enliven scenes of sensualism. But the vocabulary of Bengali was enriched during this period by a treasure of choice expressions im- ported from Sanskrit. In Western Bengal Bharata Chandra, as far as the Bengali language was con- cerned, ruled supreme in the domain of letters. The court of Raja “Krisna Chandra was the nucleus from which flowed fashions and tastes which the aristocracy of Bengal loved to imitate. In Eastern Bengal Raja Krisna Chandra’s_ great contemporary and rival Rajavallabha tried at. his capital of Vikrampur to outdo him in all matters. Raja Rajvallabha was not as great a scholar as Krisna Chandra, but was by far the more powerful of the two, having been placed at the helm of the administration of several of the provinces of Bengal. He was besides immensely rich. Krisna Chandra founded a town called Civanivasa, and the temples and edifices he built there show Rajanagara a bold attempt to combine saracenic with Hindu the capital- architecture. But the town of Rajanagara in town of . : ! Raja- Vikrampur, founded by Raja Rajavallabha, far out- ৮৪118101712, shone the splendour of Civanivasa. With the un- limited resources that Raja Rajavallabha command- ed in Bengal, his new city was made a paradise, the like of which was not to be found in the country at that time outside Murshidabad. The famous Ekuga Ratna, with its twenty one spires, which in the distance looked like the crest of a diadem