Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/333

 IV.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 297 words and many fine passages of classical beauty into them, but the subject-matter ০1 the poems proves that it was the people who gave them their original shape. The chief charac. ters do not belong to the highest castes and the Brahmin has hardly any part in the drama of the poems. Dhanapati, Crimanta, Lahana, Khullana, Chand, Behula,—the main personages in all these poems, belong to the merchant-classes, which do not hold avery high position in Hindu society. The hunter Kalaketu comes from one of the lowest castes. In the manner in which the deities are represented to help their votaries, there is evidently a coarse and rustic element which indicates that the poems originated with the populace, rather than with the more refined classes. In any case, it is the people who still patronise them, for by far the larger number of tbe Mss. of these poems I recovered from the houses of carpenters, black- smiths and other artizans. The Sanskritic School of poets, while embellishing the style and diction of these works, could not, at the same time, rebuild the plot or otherwise improve their subject-matter. The history of the origin of the Chandi-cult is Histery of the Chandi not easy to trace. Whether she was originally the লি deity of the Mongolians and Dravadians, latterly admitted into the Hindu pantheon, as we have supposed,—or she represents in an altered garb the mythological tradition of Semeremis, the queen of Assyria, who conquered Bactria about 2000 B. C.— or as the Indian Anna Purna she is to be identified with Anna Perennathe goddess of the Romans, distributing cakes, whose festivals were celebrated on the 15th of March, is a problem which is not 38