Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/437

DEVOTIONAL SONGS 413 congenial to the trend of his life and genius and burst forth even in the pages of his more studied and _ literary narrative poem— গ্রন্থ যাবে গড়াগড়ি গানে হব ব্যস্ত the literary world began to be flooded with the tuneful melodies of religious eestasy as a reaction from the com- paratively arid thraldom of conventional verse. The conflict between the Sakta and the Baisnab sects obtains in Bengali literature from time immemorial. As on the one hand the Baixsnab poets, steeped in the specu- lative, mystic and emotional realisations of the Srimad- bhigabat were giving a poetic shape of their religious long- ings in terms of human passion and ee ae emotion and figuring forth the divinity different literary me- as an ideal of love, were attempting সন to bind the infinite through the finite bonds of life’s sweetest and best affections, the Saktas on the other hand were singing the praise and describing the glory of Adya Sakti through their Chandi maigal poems. Regarded as literary ventures, these longer and more studied efforts of the Sakta writers, no doubt, hold a conspi- enous place in ancient Bengali literature but the Saktas eould not attain the lyrie predominance and _ passionate enthusiasm of Baisnab song-writers: for there is a better scope for losing oneself in poetic rapture in dealing with 4a/salya, sakhya, disya, madhurya and the other fami- liar and daily felt emotional states than in describing in a sober narrative form the feats and glories of the particular deity. The ¢anfras no doubt inculeate Adoration of god: the worship of the deity under the head as the Mother, first realised by R&ém- jmage of the Mother; but no votary of d. : a the cult before Raim-prasad realised the exceedingly poetic possibilities of this form of adoration, We