Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/142

 118 BENGALI LITERATURE yet lost all their value and interest. But this was not all. The College was the seminary of western learning in an eastern dress; it helped to diffuse western ideas through the medium of the vernacular. But at the same time, orientalism was its principal feature, and it turned the attention of students and scholars to the cultivation of oriental languages, both classical and vernacular. “The establishment of the College of Fort William” said Sir George Barlow at the first Disputation of the College held so early as 1802 “has already excited a general attention to oriental language, literature and knowledge.’’! We can realise what this means when we bear in mind the general neglect and oblivion to which Bengali literature and Bengali edueation had hitherto been consigned. The Honourable Visitor of 1815 in remarking on the encouragement held out by the College for the study of the leading oriental languages observed that previously to the fouudation of the College “the language of Bengal was generally neglected and unknown ”.? The best scholars and the greatest intellects of the country met here in friendly intercourse ; and we shall see how an attractive personality like Carey’s drew around it a band of enthusiastic writers, bent upon remov- ing the poverty of their vernacular. At the invitation and inducement of such scholars, literary works were undertaken by the enlightened Bengali community as well as by the Munshis and Pundits of the College who would The College of Fort William 1805 ed. by Claudius Buchanan, Vice- Provost & Professor of the College (See Pearson’s Memoi's of Rev. Claudius Buchanan, 1819, vol. i, p. 202 foot-note) containing all the official papers and literary proceedings of the College, p. 58 at p. 62; See also Seton-Karr, Selections from Cal. Gazette, vol. iii, p. 296-99 : ete,
 * Roebuck, Annals of the College of Fort William (1819), p. 17;
 * Roebuck, op, ci. p. 468,