Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/37

I.] who brought about a revival of Hinduism in Bengal, were imbued with a taste for the hard and fast rules of classical grammar, and had an unmixed abhorrence for the laxities of Prākrita adopted by the Buddhists. Bengali seemed to have no prospects with such scholars:—nay they zealously opposed the efforts of those who offered to help the Vernacular of the country to assert its claim as a written language. The following well-known Sanskrit couplet bears testimony to their ill-will.

"If a person hears the stories of the eighteen Purānas or of the Rāmāyaṅa recited in Bengali, he will be thrown into the hell called the Rourava."

There is a corresponding Bengali couplet which is also well-known:—

"Krittivāsa (Bengali translator of the Rāmāyaṅa), Kāçīdāsa (Bengali translator of the Mahābhārata) and those who aspire to mix with the Brahmins too closely, are the greatest of evil-doers."

In the famous controversy, which Rājā Rāmmohan Ray held with the orthodox Pandits, he had frequently to explain his conduct in regard to his publication of vernacular translations of the Sanskrit scriptures, which according to those Brahmins, were sacrilegious. This shows that even as late as the early part of the 19th century, when