Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/314

 278 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. ‘had no merit by which to attract the people. The singers tried to please by rude gestures and clown- ish leaps.’’* Vijay Gupta’s work was written in 1484, when He probab- Hari Datta’s poems, once so popular, had already 2 grown obsolete. The ungracious references made century. to his deficiencies in metre and rhyme and toa preponderance of rude words in his poems, only prove them to be antiquated specimens of the earliest form of written Bengali. We may, on these grounds, safely declare Hari Datta to have lived a few centuries before Vijay Gupta. We are in- clined to place him in the 12th century A.D. Vijay Vijay Gupta’s Manasa Mangal is one of the 2205 popular works of its class. In Eastern Bengal, especially in the district of Backergunge, it is esteemed sacred and always read on the occa- sion of the worship of Manasa Devi. There they call poems about Manasa Devi, Rayani. This word is a corruption of the word Rajani or night, and the word Yagarana which is often used for these প্রথমে রচিল গীত কাণ। হরিদত্ত ॥ হরিদত্তের যত গীত লুপ্ত হৈল কালে। যোড়াগাথ! নাহি কিছু ভাবে মোরে ছলে ॥ কথার সঙ্গতি We alee Was এক গাইতে আর গায় নাই মিরাক্ষর ॥ গীতে মতি না দেয় কিছু মিছা লাফ ফাল। দেখিয় শুনিয়া মোর উপজে বেতাল ॥ Bijay Gupta’s Padmg Puran.
 * মুর্খে রচিল গীত ন জানে মাহাত্ম্য ।