Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/616

 576 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. some sort of apology. The activities of those who translated Sanskrit works into Bengali were employed in diverse channels, and works of great literary merit and scholarly patience had been already produced in our tongue; but in the vast literature belonging to the Pauranic Renaissance we scarcely come across one work in which its author does not refer to a command from a god to undertake a work in Bengali—communicated to him in a dream,—as if the stigma of such a humble undertaking would be removed by attri- buting it to divine inspiration. The authors of Dharma Mangala specially are fond of describing such dreams. In one of these the god Dharma is said not only to have directed its author to under- take a Bengali poem in his honour but to have condescended so far as to supply him with the ink, pen and paper for the purpose. The authors seem to. have been always in great apprehension of what people might say of their adoption of the popular dialect for writing books; and in their dreams, we feel this throbbing pulse of fear, and an anxiety to prove to their honest, god-fearing and credulous countrymen that they had only acted under heavenly commands, which they were bound to obey. Vaisnava literature is free from such preten- sions. No writer amongst the Vaisnavas refers to dreams. Bengali language was no fators to them. The language in which Chaitanya spoke,— in which in vet earlier times Chandidgs_ had Bengali,—a sacred dia- lect to the Vaishnava works in Ber Vaisnavas., written, was sacred in their eyes. Some of the ali such as the Padamrita- 1g > samudra bv Crinivas Acharvyva and Chaitanya