Page:Anandamath, The Abbey of Bliss - Chatterjee.djvu/7



not exactly the originator of Bengali prose literature, Bankim Chandra, more than any other single person is entitled to the name of the Father of Bengali prose. Before him the efforts of Bengali prose literature were in the nature of experiments in style and trials of its powers and resources. It was he who for the first time struck out for himself a path in the matter of style to which Bengali literature has clung since then with the utmost profit to itself. He tapped the real source of its greatest strength and opened out a glorious vista which Bengali literature has since then gone on making its own.

The writings of Bankim Chandra Chatterji first disclosed the vast capabilities of the Bengali language. He showed that it could be simple and natural but not vulgar, and solemn and serious but not stilted, and with his complete mastery over the language he demonstrated unmistakeably how it was capable of expressing all shades of feeling and thought with force and brilliance and with a variety of expression that came from its association with the rich Sanskrit vocabulary on the one hand and the vocabulary of a quick-witted cultured and resourceful people's dialect on the other. Both these sources of strength and versatility Bankim Chandra utilised with the utmost advantage, and the result was a style of Bengali prose which by its superior charm and elegance, as well as by its facile expression, has outlived the tentative styles that flourished before him and has set the model for Bengali prose ever since.