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8 Bengali had reached a high stage of development, it was looked down upon by the orthodox Brahmins.

Our readers are likely to conclude from the above, that the Brahmins were jealous of the gradual development of Bengali and its recognition as a written language. They wanted all truths of their religion to be locked up in the Sanskrit texts; any attempt to promulgate them through the vehicle of a popular dialect, meant a loss of the great power which they had monopolized; and they thus looked upon all such movements to enrich the vernacular language, with jealousy and distrust. But it admits of another explanation also, which is perhaps the right one. The Brahmanic school probably suspected, that the hunters after cheap popularity who adopted Bengali for conveying the truths of the Brahmanic religion, would not keep intact the purity of their spiritual ideal, and that the truths, so dearly prized by them, would be sullied in the provincial versions of the great Sanskrit works. They therefore decried all efforts to popularize the Çāstras by compiling Bengali translations. Add to this their contempt for Bengali which was one of the most lax forms of the Ardha-māgadhi Prāikrita. Not only did the Sanskrit-knowing people hold the Vernacular of the country in disfavour, but even the writers of Bengali themselves had no high opinion of the resources of this language. We frequently come across such lines in old Bengali works, as—"Naturally Bengali poems are faulty" (Vijay gupta) "Not fit to he discussed in a vernacular poem" (Kavīndra)—implying, that Bengali