291) BENGALI LITERATURE publications. The spoken idiom (চলিত tai) favoured chiefly by the old school of writers like the Kabiwalas and used in country-places, never came into any direct prominence. The only two forms of style which ই stood in sharp antithesis to each between the plain and other in the prose publications of the the ornate styles. y : ‘ time and continued to play an im- portant part in the literary history down to the fifties, were the learned style (Afest Stal), on the one hand, and the missionary style (সাহেবী বাঙ্গীলা), ০০ the other. The exclusive class of learned pundits still kept on in the traditional stiffness of their elaborate diction, while a host of new writers, who came into the field with the spread of English education’ generally adopted the language of the missionaries in a purer and more modified form. The perpetually recurring struggle between the ornate and the plain styles ? which plays an important part in the history of prose style in almost every literature, was for the first time definitely posed and worked out in Bengali prose in this period—the ornate style being favoured by the pundits and the plainstylechiefly adopted by the missionary writers. eg The style of the pundits found a This opposition be- comes more well-de- direct descendant in the ' Sanscrit fined in the antithe- sis of the Alali and the Sanscrit College the Alali style, whieh betokened styles of the fifties. ‘ a contemporary reactionary move- ment, found its progenitor, through various intermedi- aries, primarily in the healthy movement towards simpli- city and naturalness, first inaugurated by the Europeans,
1 Of whom the most prominent name is that of Rey, Krsnamohan Bandyopadhay. 2 See pp. 147, 219-20. College style of the fifties; while
