Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/179

CAREY AND FORT WILLIAM COLLEGE 155 time, positively silly to have attempted original composi- tion which was likely to be little read and little understood. What then is his place? He had no originality as a worker in literature and no creative His place in Bengali ০ power. But he was a good reproducer of knowledge ; and as an educator of the nation, his work and his influence were alike very great. Discouraged by the authorities and on ee under the Company liable to deporta- tion, he and his colleagues devoted themselves with courage to evangelisation and study of the vernacular. Of this, we shall have oceasion to speak more in detail ; but it is chiefly for this educational purpose, as an indirect means of evangelisation, that his books were written. They are all rudimentary no doubt but to them belongs the merit of first reducing to a system the chaotic collo- quialism of the Bengali tongue. Knowing full well that the literature of a nation in the long run must be of indigenous growth, he at once pressed into service Bengali scholars and writers. By his own 2৪ * exertions as well as by those of others which he instigated or superintended, he left not only the students of the language well provided with elementary books, but supplied standard compositions in prose for the native writers of Bengali, and laid the foundation of a cultivated prose style and a flourishing literature throughout the country. It cannot indeed be said that Carey and his colleagues have “ raised Bengali to the rank of a literary dialect ” as the Jesuits of Madras are said to have done to the language of the South.' None ‘ Hunter, Indian Empire, p. 364. In the same strain Smith, the enthusiastic biographer of Carey, says “ for the Bengali-speaking race, William Carey created a literary language a century ago.’ (op, cit. p. 186). Vide ante p. 61.