Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/194

 164 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. of these Indian Mangal Gayaks is a result of this fact, a characteristic peculiar to themselves and to their age. But in the Mangal Gan itself, we can- not doubt that we have preserved to us the mode by which, in a remotely ancient past, the ballads of Homer were handed down amidst the villagers of Greece ; the mode adopted by Damayanti in one of the oldest portions of the Mahabharata, when she sent out the Gayaks to search for the lost Nala ; nay, a mode not unprecedented in medieval Europe itself, when the parties of strolling minne-singers performed simple dramas like ‘Ancassin and Nicolette’ in the manor hall. There are many classes of Indian rhapsodists, but these ballad singers are undoubtedly the oldest and most primitive. Even before the period of which we are now speaking, in the time of the Pal Kings, as we have already mentioned, Bengal was rich in such ballad-chronicles. It is perhaps from the great patronage which the Gayaks received from this particular dynasty, that a single performance of ae any narrative 1s ৮ a Pala to this day. The one-stringed lyre which was used by a_ ballad- singer while singing the glories of Gopi Pal, 1s ০০ still known as the Gopi-yantra, after the name of that monarch. The poets who composed the songs of the Pal Kings were, in this respect, different from the court-bards of Delhi of a later period. The Renunciation of Gopi Chand, for instance, was obviously not a subject that a man was hired and paid to sing. Its popularity and persistence were directly due to the way in which it struck the imagination of the people and was taken up by the village Mangal Gayaks. The ballads of Bebula,