Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/1046

 I¢wara Ciandra Vidya- Sagara. Tek Chand Tl.akur. Extracts from Aksaya Babu’s works. 1000 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [Chap, It was at this time also that the young I¢wara Chandra Vidyasagara, who had already passed through his novitiate in the art of Bengali com- position as a pandit in Fort William College, was first winning his laurels in the literary field. He had already written his Vatrica Simhasana which showed unmistakable traces of that elegant and correct style which later on developed so splen- didly in his Sitar Vanabasa, Cakuntala and other works. It was at this time also that Peary Chand Mitra (xom de plume) Tek Chand Thakur—whose ‘Alaler Gharer Dulal’ or ‘ The Spoilt Child’ many European writers have so freely eulogised, some comparing it with the best productions of Moliere or Fielding,—was trying to master the simple and colloquial style spoken by the gentle and rustic folk of Bengal. We can not however review the works of these master-minds, as our scope is limited to a treatment of the subject up to 1850, and most of their works were written in the decade that followed that year. Babu Aksaya Kumara Dutta, however, whose life like Pope’s was ‘‘a long disease’ had already written a considerable por- tion of those valuable contributions to the Tatta Bodhini Patrika by 1850,—which were subsequent- ly compiled by him and published in the form of separate books such as, ‘Charu Patha,’ ‘ Vahya Bastur Sahita Manava Prakritir Samvanda Vichgra’ &c. and we trust it will not be going beyond the limit to give a few extracts from his contributions to the Tattva Bodhini Patrika. The following is taken from one of the issues of the paper published in 1850.