Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/105

Rh always been the chief incentive to writing in India, whether ancient or modern; and the vehicle chosen has been until quite recent times verse, and not prose. The earliest writings of the modern period, with one notable exception, are religious poems. This exception is the first of all in point of time, the Prithirâja Rasan of Chand Bardâi, in which the ancestry, birth, heroic deeds, and final overthrow of Prithiraj of the Chauhân tribe of Rajputs, the last Hindu King of Delhi, are recited in many thousand lines of doggrel verse by Chand Bardâi, a native of Lahore, who was attached to that monarch's court in the capacity of Bhâṭ or bard, and who was an eye-witness of the historical scenes which he relates. But even in this professedly historical work the influence of tradition is too strong for the poet, and his opening canto, a very long one, is occupied by hymns to the gods, catalogues of the Purans, and legends taken from them; throughout his book the customary intervention of celestial beings occurs; on every joyful occasion the gods assembled in their cars shower down flowers; after every battle Shiva with his necklace of skulls dances frantically among the corpses, drinking the blood of the slain; birds and beasts talk; sacrifices produce magical effects; and penances are rewarded by the appearance of the god to the devotee, and by gifts of superhuman skill or power. So that here again religion, the old deeply rooted Hindu religion, asserts itself, and a legendary and miraculous element comes in side by side with accurate history and geography. The date of the composition of the poem is probably about A.D. 1200. Subsequent Hindi literature consists almost entirely of long, tiresome religious poems, together with some of a lighter type, translations or rather rifaccimenti of older poems, such as the Ramayan of Tulsi Dâs, none of which are particularly worth reading, except for the light they throw on the gradual progress of the language; and even this light is often obscured by the arbitrary changes and corruptions which the authors permit themselves to use to