Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/735

VI.] | BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 693 hundred streams to flow to the sea, keeping up a never ceasing music by their murmurs. How do these villages adorn themselves with gardens, through whose green foliage peep the scarlet java, the white kunda, and the crescent-shaped yellow atas:,— gardens where the sacred de/ and ximba trees rustlein the breeze the long summer day ! There from thick groves of mango and jack, starts suddenly spire-like to view, the tall Bengali devadaru rising above the majestic asvattha—far beyond the tiara-shaped domes of temples. Here, under the sacred fu/asi plant, the lamp is lighted at even-fall and the brow marked with vermilion bows down to leave its scarlet traces at the root. Here the sound of the evening conch summons the villagers to the temple ; while on the edge of the meadow the cows stand quietly waiting the call of the shepherds to lead them to the shed ; and the madhavi creepers, rich with the treasure of the spring, diffuse their fragrance as the weary pilgrim approaches his earthly paradise, his straw-roofed mud-hovel. From these same simple Bengali homes sprang the Navya Nyaya —the logical system of modern Bengal—which some of us hold to be the greatest achievement of the pure intellect in modern times. In these villages the poems of Valmiki and Vyasa, of Kalidas and Bhababhuti have, for hundreds of years, cast the spell of their beauty upon the people. In them the lofty prin- ciples of Vedanta philosophy have been taught by Brahmins who realised that man was one with the universe,—a flute through which might sound the whole music of god’s kingdom,—and that his greatest good lay in returning to the consciousness of his oneness with the Supreme Principle. These