Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/112

82 marriage. I find in the preface to a translation of Chandi by Rūpanārāyaṅa Ghoṣa (born, 1579 ) that a lay Kāyastha named Jādavendra Rāy, Zemindar of Āmdālā, in the District of Dacca, took away two young men belonging to a Kulīna family in a boat on the river Padmā; and there he made a proposal of marriage between them and his two daughters. If they would not agree to his proposals, they were to be drowned in the river. The elder of the two, Vāṅīnātha, preferred death to the disgrace that would be brought upon his family by such a connection. He was drowned accordingly. But the younger, Rūparāma, succumbed to the fear of death and accepted the alternative. We find in the Kula-Pañjikā by Kavi Kaṇṭhahāra, that a Kulīna Vaidya died broken hearted, from having been obliged to marry a tyrant's daughter. Such instances are numerous in the genealogical books. This goes to show to what excesses the reactionary movement in regard to marriage rules was carried. The genealogical books also show our keen desire to follow ideals of purity and truth in life, and they record the struggle that Hindu society made to ward off the harm that the overtures of an arbitrary Mahammadan aristocracy, were constantly making upon their quiet life. If any one wants to study the character of the people of this country, and to understand their aims and aspirations instead of summarily dismissing them as mysterious beings, he would do well to study these works carefully.