Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/675

 a VI.] BENGAI.1 LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 635 placed side by side with darkness! If the wicked were not in the world, who would know the value of a saintly life! The salt water of the sea makes us appreciate more the boon of sweet fresh water. If there were no misers, we could not give our tribute of praise to liberal minds. The true and the false represent but two sides of a picture. Don’t you Algol, care to listen to the praise or blame of this world. The little stock that you have in your own heart, give freely to the world, without feeling ashamed of it.” In the preliminary account of Padmavati Alaol says that Magana Thakur, the prime minister of the Chief of Aracan, had employed him to translate the Hindi poem into Bengali,—high-flown Sanskritic Bengali,—because the people of Aracan did not understand Hindi but understood Bengali. This leads us to the conclusion that the popular literature not only of Assam but also of the border- lands of Aracan used to be written in Bengali, a circumstance confirmed by the other fact to which we have already drawn attention, vzz. that it was the low class Mahomedan population of these places who have preserved these poems for about 250 years. The faults and merits of Padmavati are charac- teristic of the literary works of the period that সত্য ষে অসত্য দুহ মতে হল যত। ভাল মন্দ তে বলে না ক'রো কর্ণ গত ॥ যেই পুজি আছে মাত্র হৃদয় ভাগার । লাজ ছাড়ি আলায়েল ব্যক্ত কর তার ॥ Alaol’s Padmavati.