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 The poems originated with the people. 296 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. tive art they could command were employed to adorn the temple. The idea of luxury could have no hold upon a people who lived plainly themselves but applied their esthetic talents and capital to religious purposes. It could not produce any heart- burning by creating a sense of social inequality, as the ownership of a Matha or temple could not give rise to jealousy, however great and costly might be its decoration. The portals of a temple were open to all equally. At the same time art re- ceived its highest impetus from religious motive. Bengali poetry also, like these chapels, had for its chief and primary object the worship of deities till it gradually become intermixed and enriched with romantic incidents of the human world, even as the walls and door-ways of a temple were decorated with fresco-paintings and sculptures on_ bas- relief representing scenes from life. However crude may be the poetic literature dealt with in these chapters, it always makes an attempt to give expression to the truth that righti- ousness is upheld by the Almighty’s law, that faith conquers in the long run and that the sceptic with all his brilliance and power ultimately sinks into insignificance. The songs to which we have referred, formed the popular literature of Bengal and existed in some crude shape in the country before the Pouranik Renaissance. Though latterly taken up by the Brahmanic School, their subjects had been con- ceived and worked out by the people in an earlier epoch of our history when Brahmanic power had not yet asserted itself. The Brahmins im- proved these compositions by introducing Sanskrit