Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/124

94 dialect of India within the knowledge of the writer of the present treatise. In the translation of the Rāmāyaṅa by Krittivāsa (born, 1432 ) there is one curious passage, which he certainly did not find in the original poem of Vālmīki, referring to this process of the recovery of words from their lax Prākrita forms. Vālmīki, when he was a robber could not say রাম, but pronounced the word as লাম. The sage Nārada attributed this inability to the vices that he had practised in life, and declared with much force that no vicious man would ever be able to pronounce র. This story may be understood as an instance of the way in which the later Brahmanical school attacked and overcame the loose forms of Prākrita current in the Buddhistic period. No Bengali peasant, however illiterate, would now be excused if he could not pronounce the র in রাম.

The correction of words in the Written forms of our language has continued even up to the present day. Every year the correctness of a number of current words is called in question, being measured by the severe test of Sanskrit grammar. If any flaw is found in the writings of modern Bengali authors, judging by this standard of the Sanskrit grammar, he is unsparingly abused by the purists, and the Bengali language is gradually growing ornate and classical. In this respect it approaches Sanskrit as does no other language of modern India. Bengali was formerly, however, extremely colloquial,