Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/59

INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 35 intelligible. With the fall of the Brahmans and general decadence of social and intellectual life Religious life at the in the country, there was also a partial beginning of the 19th মারি নার century decadence of the religious ‘ife and ideals of the people, imperceptibly making its headway from the Mohammedan times. It does not concern us here as to how much of this was due to decadent Buddhism or decadent Baisnabism, or how far the aboriginal ethnical element in Lower Bengal reacted upon it. The mass of superstitions had always existed and still everywhere exists: but from this time onwards, there was a deliberate rejection of the spiritual side of the old faith and a corresponding identification with the semi- aboriginal superstitions of the masses. Public opinion on religious matters was low, although the religiosity of the people cannot be denied ; and the undoubted belief in the absolving efficacy of superstitious rites calmed the imagina- tion and allayed the terrors of conscience. Empty rituals, depraved practices, an] even horrid ceremonies like hook- swinging, human sacrifice, and infanticide partially. justify the unsparing abuse of our religion by the missionaries. But what the missionaries could not decayed but not dead. perceive in their proselytising zeal was that the religious life of the Hindu had never been quite extinct. There had been decay since the Mohammedan rule, aggravated by various complex causes, but not death ; there had been an increase e which produced the Gangabhakti-tarangini, LHarilila, or the of feebleness, but not absolute inanition. An as US devotional songs of Ram-prasaid could not indeed be said to be devoid of religious life. The _ The four divergent geyotional fervour of Sri Chaitanya, the currents, ¥ intellectual ideas of naiyayik Raghu- natha, the ritualistic doctrines of smarta Raghunandan,