Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/197

 IV.] | BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 167 country. Not only the subject, but the poetical features of a connected narrative become. quite familiar to all classes of people, and when the great poet comes, he has the double advantage of finding a vast body of raw poetical material at hand, and a willing audience educated to appreciate his subtlest acts of creative fancy. The poems of. Chandi Mangal, Manasa Mangal, and the like, though they certainly do not bear comparison with the great Indian Epics, have thus a truly epic quality about them. They are expressions of all the poetry of the race and hence we find them read and admired by millions—the illiterate masses forming by far, the most devoted of their admirers. _ At every stage of our past history, these ballad- singers have risen up from amongst the masses. New features have been introduced, in accordance With the taste and fashion of the period, the nature of the changing environment. As the Gopiyantra or one-stringed lyre of the old rhapsodists was supplanted in a later age by the behala or violin and khanjan or cymbals, of our present Mangal Gayaks, so also the crown of the Chief Gayen 1s perhaps a new departure. It is but natural that the Hindu Renaissance should have adopted this most convenient and powerful method for popularising Paurgnik stories, and we have seen that it did so, with the utmost vigour, improving the old ways, which had been natural only to rustic singers, and adding such touches. of heightened poetry as were inevitably demanded by the deeper culture of the present audience. Under this head, of additions in accord- New fea- tures intro~ duced. The Hindu Renais- sance adopt the Mangal Gans for popularis- ing Paura- nik stories.