Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/59

II.] distinctly proves that Dharma-thākur had originally no plaCe in the Hindu Pantheon.

As the popularity of these songs amongst the masses continued unabated, the Brahmins gradually took them up, and later poems of Dharma-mangal have been so greatly transformed in their hands, that they look very much like works devoted to the Çākta-cult; but reading between the lines, the readers will be able to discover evident traces of Buddhism in them. It should however be noted here, that the Buddhism indicated in these works, has scarcely anything in common with the pure Buddhism of Açoka’s time; and both are even more unlike one another than the Pourāṅic Hindu religion of the present day and the pure religion of the Upaniṣadas.

The Çunya Purāṅa by Rāmāi Pandit, Chāryāchāryaviniçchay by Kānu Bhatta, the poems known as Dharma-mangal, and ballads and songs in honour of some of the Pāl Kings of Bengal bear distinct stamps of Buddhism on them. The ballads of the Pāl Kings, who were great patrons of Buddhism, indicate the marvellous power wielded by Gorakṣanāth and Hāḍisiddha, the great Buddhistic saints. The latter belonged to one of the meanest castes of the Hindu society, yet his power is said to have been so great, that the gods of Heaven, trembled in fear, when the saint approached. In the songs of Govinda Chandra Pāl, revised by the poet Durlabha Mallik, the King is said to have asked his religious preceptor—the far-famed Hāḍisiddha, as to what was the true religion. Hāḍisiddha said:—