Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/964

 920 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. shows a style which was in current use in the country for long years. The epistles on mercan- tile and state affairs show a greater preponderance of Persian words, whereas the correspondence of a domestic and personal nature and those on religi- ous subjects were generally free from such admix- ture. The addresses to high personages contained Lipimala. Stereotyped sentences which were full of corrupt Sanskrit words. The form seems to have come down from a very remote age. Here is a curious specimen of the usual form of one Raja addressing another. We take the extract from the Lipimala. “ বাজাধিরাজ হিন্দৃস্থানমাঝ যাহা দর্পময় ক্ষমা অতিশয় সরলান্তকরণ রূপ হেমবরণ শঙক্তিমন্ত ধীর নতি মহাবীর আত্ম- লোকপাল বৈরীমর্দকাল শ্রমান গুণধর মহারাজ রাজেশ্বর রাজচব্রবন্তার সাহায্য লিপি লেখা যাইতেছে 1” When Bengali literature had been thus placed in inexpert hands and committed to pedantic follies from which there seemed no way of its resuscitation, the European writers of Bengali cut a new channel of their own and made the style of vernacular prose flow into it; it was thus saved The from the mazy and intricate paths of involved colloquial : : : style sentences and compound words in which it had favoured : a 4 i by the entangled itself. The European writers naturally Europeans. hose simple and short sentences and colloquial words and obliged the pundits: to write in a similar style. However high a pundit might soar in the atmosphere of classical learning, he certainly knew the colloquial dialect of his country, though he had hitherto treated it with great contempt and had never thought of adopting it as a medium for literary composition.. We find Dr.