436 BENGALI LITERATURE suppressed by the law and never allowed to be reprinted, and it is not necessary to drag them out of their deserved obscurity ; but there is evidence to show that from the end of the 18th to the middle of the 19th century this prolific literature, outrageous as it is to all taste, obtained consider- able favour and currency. The earliest surviving specimen of these tales, however belong to a period posterior to 1825 and do not therefore properly come within the scope of this volume, although it is quite probable The most flourishing that it was preceded by a host of time of this litera- similar “od নিত similar productions, belonging to an ture falls outside our ; 1 রী রি 5125 period. earlier date, which are now lost to us. Kali Krsna Das’s Ka@mint Kumar, however, is placed by some at the end of the 18th century, but the earliest printed copy! that we have seen bears the date of 1836 ; while Chandrakainta, the next well-known piece cannot possibly belong to a much earlier date. Madan Mohan’s Basaddatta, written in the same style but with finer power and greater delicacy, was first published in 1837. These were followed by a host of other works of the same type such as Tarachamd Datta’s Manmatha Kabya (1844), Munsi Eradot’s Kuranga-bhinu (1845), Umacharan Tribedi’s Madan Madhuri (1856), Banamali Ghosal’s Padmagandha-upakhyan (1864), Bisvambhar Das’s Rajanikanta (1870), Gobinda Sil’s Hemlata-Ratikanta (1870 ?) all belonging to a period between 1840 and 1870. This would, therefore, amply indicate that between these dates there was an exuberant growth, if not recrudescence 1The copy in the Sahitya Parisat Library is wanting in the title-
page. The date given in the text is the date given in a copy lent to me by a friend but which is now lost and is probably the date of the first edition ; for there is a copy of Kali Krsna’s other work, Manbhavijan, in the Sahitya Parisat Library bearing 1856 (Saka 1778) as the date apparently of the first edition. It is not unlikely therefore to hold that Kali-Krsna’s works belong to the period between 1836 and 1856.
