Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/214

 184 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [Chap. by some romantic motive appealing to the ordinary mind; But in addition, there is a great purpose to be traced in this Pauranic literature, underlying and hallowing the realistic scenes. This purpose is not made inartistically prominent, but it works half- revealed as the great Moral Law that runs through the affairs of men in this world. In India religion is not dissociated from any department of thought; in poetry, in philosophy and. even in logic, the chief point, the Indian writers have in view, is spirituality, which to their eyes is the finer essence of life and without which life sinks into grossness. Their earthly habitations are meant as temporary residences which always have lattices and apertures open towards heaven. Details of the changes which have been made by later poets in the original work of Krittivasa ~ will be dealt with in the chapter on Vaisnavism. The great The great popularity of Krittivasa cannot but opularit : 2 ধান পি strike any one who visits Bengal. Through the তি cocoanut and mango groves which half conceal the thatched roofs of the villages, let one pass by the narrow muddy road, in the stillness of the night, when nature, as it were, drowses, with the droop- ing leaves of the trees and the waning light in the cottages, and he will mark here and there some small merchant or craftsman, sitting beside his lamp and poring over the pages of the Ramayana, which he chants, as he reads, in a sing-song voice, that chimes in, with the droning of the beetles and the sound of the falling leaves. oes ( Jee