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II.] We miss in these sayings, the familiar injunctions for prayer and worship, indispensable in a book of rules for the guidance of a Hindu house-holder; and and here we can draw a clear line of demarcation between the state of society before and after the revival of Hinduism in Bengal. All rules and codes framed for the guidance of men and women in our society, after the downfall of Buddhism have a distinct and unmistakable reference to the metaphysical side of religion. In them a far greater stress is laid on devotion to gods than on principles of morality. The Hindu priests even go so far as to declare, that a man committing the worst of sins, may secure a place in Heaven by uttering the name of God, a single time. The Dāker Vachana evidently belongs to a period anterior to the acceptance of this ideal in society.

Dāker Vachana is not the only book of its kind in old Bengali. Khanār Vachana furnishes an equally old specimen of our vernacular. The latter is more popular with the masses and has, therefore undergone far greater changes than Dāker-Vachana. We, however often light upon old and antiquated forms of expressions in it, which remind us, that though simplified and altered, the sayings must also be traced to an early age. Though the subjects treated of, in the two books, cover a varied field, by far the greater portion of them is devoted to agricultural subjects. In Bengal, where the people are chiefly of the peasant class, these sayings are accepted as a guide by millions;—the wisdom they display is the result of acute observation