Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/473

MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 449 to diseuss this point here in detail ; but it may be pointed out that at least in the literary sphere, Baisnabism was not a universal movement and its influence on contemporary and subsequent literature was never wide. In estimating this, influence on the literature of the 17th and 18th eenturies we must guard against the error of regarding it in the magnifying perspective in which we view it in the 19th or the 20th century, in which this influence has been very marked. Baisnabism never disturbed — seriously the uninterrupted course of Bengali literature from the earliest time down to the 1Sth century. Side by side with Baisnab songs and lyrics flourished the traditional ‘chandi-poems, manasar yan, dharma-mangal, sibayan, whieh in form and spirit bear little kinship with Baisnab produe- tions and which affiliates itself with the earlier and later poetical literature of Bengal. Even a century later, we ‘find the same tradition carried on in the Pudmabatz of Alaol, Durgipaieharatri of Jagat Ram, ’ Sihayan of Ramesvar, Annandi mangal of Bharat-chandra, Gangabhahkti-tarangini of Durga Prasid—all of which show little direct influence of Baisnab ideas or Baisnab forms of art. The socio-ethical ideas of Baisnabism, no doubt, inaugurated a new line of culture; but its cosmopolitanism, its ideal of universal love and its theory of emotional realisation was antagonis- tic to the development of nationality or of national ideas, A spark of new life animated the social organism but this new-born religious enthusiasm hardly permitted its votaries to stand and east a look around them; it carried them off their feet in a flood of devotional eestasy, in a flood of lyrie idealism. Instead of a full-blooded dramatic litera- ture, it gave us a mass of resplendent religious-amatory lyries. The influence of Baisnabism, therefore, was hardly favour- able to the development of the inherent dramatic elements 57