Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/379

 IV. ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 343 The poets of Bengal had been long aiming at a faithful depictment of scenes of their own home-life, and in Mukundaram their efforts reached the high water-mark of success. Like all great poets Mukundaram represents his own people and the pecularities of the age in which he lived. The human world as he observed it in Bengal was con- stantly before his mind. Under the garb of the gods of heaven and even of the beasts of the forest, it is the people of Bengal who appear before our view in the characters that he has painted. The beasts of the forest complain to Chandi that they are in terror of Kalketu the hunter. The tiger who amongst the lower animals, is held to belong to the Ksatriya or warrior caste, the great elephant whose might is fully equal to his enormous bulk, the rhinoceroes with his dreaded sword, the great buffalo whose red-eyes frighten the enemy away,— all look crest-fallen and humiliated. Their speeches strangely disclose the political life of Bengal as it was in Mukundaram’s time, even as the speeches of the fallen cherub in Milton’s “ Pandemonium” recall the views and sentiments of the Radicals during the Civil War in the time of Charles I. The humbler beasts complain to Chandi that they are poor innocent animals who graze in the fields and are neither Neogis nor Chaudries who own estates. The conversation of Chandi with the beasts, humilia- ted and strickenas they are by the arrows of Kalketu, is full of significant hints indicating how the sun of the glory of the Hindu chiefs was setting before the superior martial power of the Moslem invaders, and how the yoke of Muhammadan rule fell upon all ranks in society without sparing even the lowest. Depicts Bengali home. The beasts talk politics,