Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/641

 V.] | BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 601 ~The metres used by the Vaisnava-masters, though rich in their forms, do not conform to the stereotyped ways of early metrical styles called Payara and Tripadi chhandas which were carried to perfection by writers with a rigid classical taste. In the Manik Chandra Rajar gan and other writings of the Buddhistic period, we find the Pyajara chhanda to be far from being restricted to 14 letters as it latterly became ; the latitude taken by the earliest writers in sometimes dragging the lines toa tiresome length, and not unoiten shortening them to abrupt and halting rhymes, were the result of ignorance and uncultured taste. In the Vaishnava writings, however, we find a freedom from the rigidness of classical models—not to be mistaken for the in- artistic and unrestrained excesses of the vulgar, but which is prompted bya superior poetic faculty, con- scious of its art, making light of restrictions, though keenly alive to the natural rhythm of metre and expression. In the following lines the poet over- rides Payara chhanda sportively and shows that by freeing himself from the trammels of a stereotyped metre, he makes the lines more rhythmical :and artistic. “জয় জয় দেব-কবি নৃপতি-শিরোমণি বিদ্যাপতি রসধাম। জয় জয় চঙ্ডদাস রসশেখর অখিল ভূবনে অনুপাম ॥'' “Praise be to Jaya Deva, the brightest jewel of the princes of poetry; praise be to Vidyapati, a store-house of elegant sentiments, and praise be to Chandidas, the highest pinnacle of delicate feeling,
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৮1৮0 1s peerless in the world. The poet who wrote these lines was well-versed in the Sanskrit classics, as the very expressions he 76 The metres, T he poetic licence,