Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/64

40 BENGALI LITERATURE French Revolution from which dates a period of literary activity which has culminated in the rich literary after- growths of modern Kurope. But the popular opinion, long and actually entertained, that the British occupation of Bengal by itself sufficiently accounted for and directly caused the disappearance of ancient literature as distinguished from modern, is a delusion which the revived study of the literature itself would, in a great measure, help to check and correct. However great and far- The British ‘conquest’, as generally supposed, never swept off the old ‘gonquest’ no more swept away ancient literature and replac- ; ; 7 ed it with the new: Bengal and its literature and replaced it merely helped a. : : a process of রি it with something else than the Nor- i. রর already man Conquest of England directly atoot. ox reaching its effect was, the British caused the disappearance of Anglo- saxon England and its literature. Modern evolutionary theory hardly leaves any room for such absolute political or literary cataclysms; and a little consideration will show that the British occupation of Bengal, like the Norman one of England, only helped and turned to good a process of decadence in literature, which had independently begun, which was going on rapidly, and which, if the political revolution had not dealt a death-blow to the exhausted literature would have landed it independ- ently in absolute barrenness and stagnation. In order to appreciate what effect British occupation of Bengal produced upon Bengali literature, we must realise in what state it actually had been when the new start was made. It was, as we have stated, a period of great confusion. The political and social disturbances, no doubt, as the apologist of Bengali literature often points out, were affecting men’s minds, and the physical and mental fatigue consequent thereupon is responsible to a great extent for this lamented paucity of literary productions ;