Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/923

VII. ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 879 took the vow of celibacy, foregoing his rightful claims to the throne of Indraprastha, typify the highest example of filial obedience. Sita, Savitri, Damayanti, Cakuntala, Behula in the past and hundreds of those in the later age who courted death on the funeral pyre of their husbands, showed that the ideal of nuptial duties in this land was capable of raising women to the highest martyrdom. Hanumana typifies devotion to a master, and Ekalavya to the religious preceptor. The home was the great sanctuary where sacrifices and martyrdoms were to be undergone for the sake of those sacred ties which bind one to it ; and this would, according to the notion of the Hindus, infalliably lead him to a realisation of the supreme duty which a man owes to God,—culminating in,a glorious renunciation of home for the good of the soul and of the world. Indeed, in a place where a joint and undivided family system required a man to live and eat together with all his near kinsmen, it would be impossible to live in harmony without elevating the domestic duties into the highest virtues. Hence no other nation has ever given so high a value to domestic duties, identifying them so closely with the spiritual. The literature of a race inspired with such ideas has a unique value. Its scope may be compara- tively small, but within its own narrow limits, it is deeper and purer than one could expect from a literature covering a wider range. The Bengali literature of the past had been reserved for the Bengalis alone ; a fact which gives it an original character, displaying the subtle turns of the intel- lectual and spiritual qualities of the race; and one,