Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/113

 INTRODUCTION. 91 Of prose works this literature has but few and insignificant specimens. The chief are the Bakhars, or Chronicles of Kings, in which, as usual in India, so much that is legendary and impossible is mixed up with actual history as to detract greatly from their value to the student. In modern times the English have introduced into this, as into all the other provinces of India which have fallen under their sway, a new spirit of learning and a new era of develop- ment. It remains to be seen how far this movement will remain an exotic, fostered by the ruling power, and unable to grow alone, and how far it will, as in Bengal, strike roots into the soil and bear fruit. Up to the present date the Marathas have not produced any original works in the new style. Of course the manufacture of endless religious poems goes on as usual, but this is not progress. Prose works of a solid and enduring nature seem as yet to have appeared only rarely and at long intervals. Newspapers, of course, there are, but the people seem to have been rather overdosed with translations and adaptations from English, executed by well-meaning but rather obtrusive officials and missionaries. It may be doubted whether any, or at least more than a small fraction, of these works are really suited to the popular comprehension. We look in vain for spontaneous productions of the native mind, for works which seize hold on the national taste in the way that the old religious poems did, for works which do not betray the guiding and correcting hand of the English school- master on every page. Until we get such works as these there will be no national literature. Gujarati literature begins with Narsingh Mehta, who lived in the fifteenth century; the exact date of his birth is not known, but he was alive in 1457, and is considered the best poet in the language. His poems are chiefly short, something like sonnets, and of course religious. Some sixty poets are mentioned, but of these only ten or twelve are esteemed, as Vishnu Das, Shiv