Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/711

 VI.J] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 671 this respect. But perusing closely the Annada Mangala by Bharata Chandra (a poem running over 13000 lines) we scarcely find one instance of disagreement of vowel-sounds in the final syllables of rhyming couplets. One or two examples of this defect are found in his short poem on Satya- narayana which the poet composed when he was only 15 years old. In the whole range of Bengali literature, no poet has shown a finer sense of harmony of sound or a greater skill in the choice of his words than Bharata Chandra. In our own day some poets have followed the principle in rhyming stated above; but in an earlier epoch of the history of our literature, it was Bharata Chandra who held up the torch that lighted the. path of subsequent poets, so all credit is due to him. The Sanskrit metres that Bharata Chandra introduced into his Bengali poems are faultless. As the long and short sounds of vowels are missed in the spoken dialect of Bengal, it required a remarkable power to introduce the measured sounds of noble Sanskrit metres in our tongue, and Bharata Chandra’s poems inthe Totaka and Bhujangaprayata metres not only show perfect adherence to classical rules, but they flow so easily and with such a natural grace, that no one would doubt, after pe- rusing them, that Bengali is a true daughter of Sanskrit, and that a poet who knows the resources of the language can give hera form which would prove her striking affinity in all respects with that of her august parent. Though it is so difficult to convey to our readers an idea of the beauty of Bharata Chandra’s poems, depending, as this does, on a singularly happy