Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/145

 III. 1 CHAPTER III. . CHAND DĀS. I. VIDYĀPAT. O -Chandī Dās. The Bengali works to which we have referred in the last chapter, scarcely rise to the level of of decent literature. They were composed by peasants and villagers, and these were the people who loved to read them and hear them recited. This fact must be held to account for their somewhat gross turn of humour. Our language, as I have said in the first chapter, was greatly stimulated by the attention it received from the Moslem Sovereigns of Gauda with their inevitably anti-Sanskritic culture. But it possessed inherent qualities of its own which were bound to have been recognised in course of time, even if chance had not brought the Mahammadans to this country. With poets like Chandī Dās and Vidyāpati, the vernaculars of Bengal and Behar could not long have been allowed to languish in the cold shade of Brahmanical disdain. These songs revealed its innate stength and gave unmistakable proof of its capacity to express the highest thoughts of the human mind. At the very time when rural folk were amusing themselves by a display of coarse wit in halting rhyme;-when no better themes than the plough, the furrow and the rice-field were to be found for the awakening of poetic inspiration ; when the tales of the Siddhas-and their powers were being sung in the villages, and gave the same amus The poems of Chandidas and Vidyā pati COntra Sted With other Vernacular writings of the age.