Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/399

 : IV.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE: 363 poem on Chandi. He was contemporary — with Jay Narayana. There are some sparkling passages in his poem. But the list of poems in honour of the local deities of Bengal does not end here. There are many other goddesses belonging to the Cakta-cult in whose honour long poems have been composed. It is not possible to give any detailed idea of these. But we shall briefly refer to some of them here. (c) Poems on Ganga Devi. We find a certain nnmber of poems written The sanc: in honour of Gangadevi, goddess of the Ganges. tity of the Amongst the Hindus the Ganges is sacred. 525 dying, we must have at least a drop of Ganges’ water, or we feel disconsclate at the hour of death. This instinct is deeply engrained in the minds of 96215. 1115 late P. C. Roy of the Bengal Provincial Service, who was so advanced in his views, that at the close of his official career, he retired to England and married an English woman, literally pined for a drop of Ganges’ water, during his last illness in England, and his English wife has informed her Indian relatives of this, in several touching letters. Stripped of the mythological account given of its origin, it is possible that its present course 15 in some measure due to the engineering enter- prises of some of the early Hindu Princes, of whom Bhagiratha, according to the tradition current in the country, was the most successtul. The river