Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay

“ By far the greater number of Bengali writers belong to the Sanskrit school; but by far the greater number of good writers belong to the other.
It may be said that there is not at the present day anything like an indigenous school of writers, owing nothing either to Sanskrit writers or to those of Europe. The Sanskrit school stakes for its models the later Sanskrit writers, and they are remarkably deficient in originality. The greater originality of the writers of the English school is the point in which their superiority to the Sanskrit school is most marked. ”

“ They enjoy an undeserved celebrity, and toe, in our opinion, a very worthless set. The best known among them is Bhárat Chandra Ráy, who was till lately considered the best of the Bengali poets,—an opinion not yet wholly eradicated, but fast losing ground. Bhárat Chandra is chiefly known by his Vidyá Sundara and his Annadá Mangal. Neither work has much merit, though an exception must be made in favour of the character of Hira, the flower-girl, a coarse but racy and vigorous portrait, not equalled by anything of its kind in Bengali. ”

“ Oorya bearers, with tooth-stick in hand, are off like the rest to the waterside. The Englishman, the Hurkaru and the Phoenix, are being distributed to their subscribers. Native papers are like venison; they are kept for a day to get a flavour. It is different with English papers; they must be distributed before the sun is up.
So much for Hutam.
One of the best masters of a pure and vigorous Bengali style—neither characterized by the somewhat pedantic purity of Vidyasagar, nor rough and homely like Tekchand and Hutam—one of the best masters, we say, of Bengali style is Babu Bhudeb Mukerji. ”

“ Highly gratified with the progress which his son had made in Oriental learning, Baburam Babu now thought it time that he should learn English. So Mati Lal was sent to Calcutta, where he attended an English school. But he did no more good at English than at Persian and Sanskrit, and preferred to devote his time with other congenial spirits to cards, dice, cock-fighting, kite-flying, and other amusements. ”

“ Why have I this body? or is the body mine? Why has a body been attached to me to make me a corporeal being? and why is this body self-conscious? What is this body? and who am I that inhabit it! Am I the same being which I was, when I first became myself within this body?'
Iswar Chandra Gupta is now fast falling into oblivion, and we must proceed to notice the class of writers who have superseded him. But before doing so, we must premise a few words on the present general condition of Bengali literature. ”

“ The only other writer of the Sanskrit school whom we shall stop to mention, is Pandit Ram Narayan Tarkaratna; and we mention him more on account of his reputation than for any merit to be found in his writings. Among his plays are Kulin Kulasarbaswa, directed against the evils of Kulinism, and Naba Natak, a protest against polygamy. He has also made translations of the Ratnavali, the Malati Madhava and Sakuntala. These translations are execrably bad, and, like his original works, full of bombastic writing. On the whole we consider that this writer's popular reputation is entirely undeserved. ”

“ It is characteristic of the Sanskrit school that they seldom venture on original composition. Even Vidyasagar's ambition soars no higher than adaptations, and a few translations. When they do venture on original composition, they are rarely caught straying beyond the beaten track, beyond a reverential repetition of things which have been said over and over again from time immemorial. If love is to be the theme, Madana is invariably put into requisition with his five flower-tipped arrows ”

“ But it is not as a translator that he is known to fame, and familiar to almost every Bengali, but as the author of Hutam Pyancha, a collection of sketches of city-life, something, after the manner of Dickens' Sketches by Boz, in which the follies and peculiarities of all classes, and not seldom of men actually living, are described in racy vigorous language, not seldom disfigured by obscenity. ”

“ But it cannot be denied that he is a fair representative of that great horde of partly educated Babus, whose only claim to enlightenment lies in the fact that they drink, wear shabby trousers and stammer out barbarous English. These- are the men who swarm in every office, and plague officials with endless applications for employment, crowd the thoroughfares of the native town in the evening, drain the liquor shops, and form the majority of his audience when Babu Keshub Chunder Sen lectures at the Town Hall. ”

“ She had imbibed from him a deep veneration for his goddess Kali, but her soul revolted from the human sacrifices which the Kapalika offered to Kali whenever occasion offered. The two returned to the hermit's cell, and it soon appeared that Naba Kumar was intended for sacrifice. His host, who was a man of vast strength, had tied him to the stake and would have at once carried out his purpose, but Kapal Kundala concealed the sacrificial knife, and when the Kapalika went to look for it, she cut the prisoner's bonds and the two took at once to flight. ”

“ There is probably no writer whose merits are more variously estimated—some enthusiasts thinking him fit to compare with Kalidasa, while others regard him as a mere poetaster. For ourselves we agree with neither, and while admitting his considerable merits, we are not prepared to rank him among great poets. He has incurred much hostile criticism by his innovations in language, and by his introduction into Bengali of the use of blank verse, but his rightful place in Bengali literature is perhaps the highest. ”

“ This is the simple story of Áláler Gharer Dulál, but the mere narrative is the least merit of the book. Its real value lies in the sketches of character and pictures of Bengali life which it contains. Most Europeans know little or nothing of natives beyond what may be learned in our Courts of Justice—places infested by a class of rascals hardly to be found elsewhere, and in which even otherwise honest and truthful men consider themselves entitled to lie, just as they consider themselves entitled to throw aside all regard for caste and for morality in the temple of Vishnu at Puri. ”

“ His works are disfigured, too, by a disgusting obscenity which unfits them for republication at a time when Bengali readers are not all of the rougher sex.
There is perhaps nothing more lamentable in the whole history of literature than the school of Bengali writers who followed the Nuddea poets and preceded the present generation. There is scarcely any readable work (readable even in the sense in which Bhárat Chandra's poems are readable) belonging to that age—the age of the Naba Babu Bilas and the Prabodha Chandrika ”

“ The country is overrun with men of this sort, and Mr. Datta's picture is true to the life; but they must not be confounded with the really cultivated class, who, in spite of all that has been said regarding the spread of English education, are comparatively few in number.
The next author whom we must mention is Babu Dinabandhu Mitra, the best Bengali dramatist, indeed the only good dramatic author. He has written altogether five plays, of which two are farces. His earliest production, the Nil Darpan, is better known by name to the European public than almost any other Bengali book. ”

“ Of education, they have had nothing worth the name. Having spent a few years very unprofitably in learning a smattering of English at some Anglo-vernacular school, they started in life—if poor, at the age of eighteen, as umedwars. If rich, they devoted themselves from the same age with their whole strength to swinish pleasures. ”

“ The air is full of the scent of the flowers hawked about the streets. In some houses over the street, lessons arc being given in dancing, and passers-by stand open-mouthed below enjoying the tinkling music. ”

“ There are several other writers still remaining to be noticed, but the limited space at our disposal compels us to bring the present paper to a close. Babu Ranga Lai Banerji is a poet with a high reputation among his countrymen, but we must say that he has done very little to deserve it. His three poems are—Padmini, Karmmadebi and Surasundari, all three being versified stories of Rajput women, taken from Tod's Rajasthan. Padmini is perhaps the best. This writer belongs to the school of Bharat Chandra, though, unlike the old author, he is free from obscenity. ”

“ Datta, his undoubted poetic genius seems entirely to desert him as soon as he sets about writing a play. His farces, however, are good. One of them, entitled Is this Civilization? is the best in the language. This little work deserves notice independently of its own really great merit.
The Bengali press at the present day is very prolific, but by far the largest part of the books published are mere servile imitations of some successful author. There are imitators of Vidyasagar, imitators of Tekchand Thakur, of Hutam, of Babu Dinabandhu Mitra and of the author of Durgesnandini ”

“ He has retired on his gains, and is a zemindar and merchant. He has four children, two sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Mati Lal, is an ignorant, selfish, dissipated young fellow—spoiled from the effect of the over-indulgent treatment of his father. A Gurumahásay who had taught him Bengali, an ignorant Pujari Brahman, employed from motives of economy as Sanskrit tutor, and a retired tailor who instructed him in Persian, laboured, as might have been anticipated, with but indifferent success. ”

“ The hermit loves the fair one destined for the king's second wife, and ends by marrying her.
This serious plot is poor enough, but the other story is worked out in an irresistibly comic manner. The character of Jaladhur, too, though doubtless taken in great part from Shakespeare's Falstaff is life-like and consistent, and Mallika, with her love of mischief and fun and inexhaustible fertility of resource, is Babu Dinabandhu Mitra's best female character. ”

“ So, with the assistance of Miyáján Miyá, a serious charge was made against the unoffending Baradá Babu, who would have paid dearly for his folly in neglecting to fee the amlah, if he had not known English and so been able to put the facts clearly before the magistrate. For when the magistrate had heard so much of the evidence as he could listen to without neglecting his cigar, his newspaper and his private chits, the sherishtadar strongly urged a conviction, and nothing but his knowledge of English saved Baradá Babu and gained him an acquittal. ”

“ Groups of fast young men, with peals of laughter and plenty of English talk, are knocking at this door and that. They left home when they saw the lamps lighted in the evening, and will return when the flour-mills begin to work. ”

“ It remains to notice Babu Dinabandhu Mitra's two farces. In the "Old Man Mad for Marriage", a not unfrequent kind of folly is cleverly satirized. An old man, named Rajib Mukerji, is very anxious to be married, and people are wont to irritate him by proposing as a match an ugly black-faced Dom woman, known as "Panchua's mother". Some school-boys determine to play him a trick. ”

“ We can scarcely expect a better state of things from the class of men who compose the rank and file of Bengali authors and Bengali critics. Authorship in Bengal is the vocation of half-educated scribblers. The educated native has a sort of ultra-utilitarian contempt for the office, and considers himself above writing in his own language. ”

“ However much we may lament the poverty of Bengali literature, the last fifteen years have been a period of great progress and hope; within that time at least a dozen writers have arisen, every one of whom is immensely superior, in whatever is valuable in a writer, to this—the most popular of their predecessors. ”

“ Each sought to abuse the other, and the more pungent the abuse, the greater was the triumph of the abuser and the pleasure of the listeners. The singing was generally the most execrable to which human folly has ever given the name of music, though in a few cases the airs were sweet and elegant. ”

“ Philosophers have not seen the end. The Shastras do not agree. One teaches one thing, and another teaches another. * * * * Each has gone as far as his powers lead him, but the indescribable could not be described, and no eye of human knowledge could reach so far as where Thou went. ”

“ They are not too proud to accept a bit of fuel, a chillum of tobacco, or a roll of pan. Some are coming back angry with the city because it has disappointed their hopes, and are busy revolving in their minds the best means of making some rich man feel their dignity and power. ”

“ If it has greater faults than the other, they are redeemed by greater merits. The idea of the play is taken from Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, and the plot is that of a well-known Hindu nursery tale, embellished with the love adventures of a sort of Indian Falstaff. The Falstaff of the story is Jaladhur, a prime minister, whose weight and circumference have marked an embarrassing figure, though he still retains the amorous propensities of youth. The object of his affections is Malati, the young and beautiful wife of a merchant named Kalikanta. ”

“ Petty traders like the oil-man, fuel-supplier and grocer, are pleading their cause pathetically and humbly. "We are ruined, sir," they say, "we are weak like the pooti fish; how can we subsist if you treat us so? The muscles of our legs are worn out with coming to your house for the money. ”