Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/625

 V.] = BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. — 585 works. They commit to memory most of the padas of the Vaisnava-masters and it is the people of this class who have been supplying the noblest ideas of self-sacrificing love to rural Bengal for more than 350 years. In a previous chapter I referred to the kathakas or professional narrators of stories. It is impos- sible to exaggerate the great influence which they wield over the masses. They narrate stories in the vernacular, from the Bhagavata, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata and intersperse their narration with songs which heighten the effect of their des- cription. The deep religious ideas which underlie the stories are discussed at intervals by the kathaka and no one can be successful. in this profession un- less he is endowed with oratory, a sweet voice, and the power of raising tender emotions in the mind of his audience. We can trace the custom of such narration as early as the times of the Ramayana ; it may be even earlier; we find Valmiki who lived many thousand years ago refer toa class of people whose avocation it was to narrate stories (See Ayodhya kanda, Chap. 69.) ; but the manner in which the modern kathakas deliver stories with the object of imparting religious instructions and inspiring devotional sentiments in Bengal is derived fromthe Vaisnavas. There are formulz which every kathaka has to get by heart,—set passages describ- ing not only Civa, Laksmi, Visnu, Krishna, and other deities, but also describing a town, a battlefield, morning, noon and night and many other subjects which incidentally occur in the course of the narration of a story. These set passages are com- posed in Sanskritic Bengali with a remarkable 74 The kathakas, Set passages.