Mrityun- jaya. 886 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE, [ Chap. (b) The Pundits of the College. The movement for undertaking literary and scientific works in Bengali prose, mainly initiated by the Europeans, served to evoke the zeal of the enlightened native community who pursued it with. great vigour and activity. Some of the best prose works, on the lines indicated in the vernacular writings of Europeans, were compiled by the Pundits of the Fort William College, where Dr. Carey, as a professor of the vernacular languages, wielded a great influence, and was ever ready to render all possible help to all undertakings to promote,the cause of vernacular literature. The works written by Bengali authors in this period mainly follow European models in style, and the best of them, making all possible allowances, scarce- ly possess the worth of second class literary pro- ductions, whereas most of the others, while embody- ing rudimentary information in all departments of useful knowledge, are mere translations of European works—mostly school-books. The Pundits of the Fort William College, as | have said, wrote many Bengali prose works about this time which enjoyed great popularity not only with the native community but with the Europeans, specially the candidates for Civil Service Examina- tion who had to read them as text-books in that College. ‘At the head of the establishment of Pundits,” (at the Fort William College) writes J. C. Marshman in his history of Cri Ramapur Mission, stood ‘ Mrityunjaya, who although a native of Orissa,*
Mrityunjaya Tarkalankara was born in 1762 A.D. at Midnapur,
