Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/187

 PUNDITS AND MUNSIS 163 make it a truly historical work, as far as_ possible, Competent critics have pronounced this work to be genuinely historical, in spite of its occasional aberrations due to hasty shifting of gossip and fact. The scanty facts and abundant fancies as to the life of Pratapaditya are a common-place of history. But leaving aside guess-work and speaking of certainties, modern research has been able to make little additions to what Ram Basu has written a century ago.! Whatever might be the value of his historical conclusions, however, we are bound to admit at least that the book evinces a careful historical treatment anda truly historical spirit although the work is not history in the proper sense of the term. This treatment and this spirit were hitherto unknown. ‘There are indeed afew so-called biographical and _ historical works in ancient Bengali literature, such as Chaitanya Bhagabat or Chaitanya Charitamrta, but these works, written in verse, are, in tone and subject, more religious than historical, and ostensibly modelled on the ancient Puranas. It is true that as contemporaneous record of society reflected in them, these works may supply mate- terials to a historian but the works themselves can hardly be called historical. Indeed to Ram Ram we must give the credit of being the first Bengali prose-writer who attempted to write history in the sense tn which it is taken to-day.* The story is given in a connected ’ See Nikhil Nath Ray’s Edition p. 199, where the claim of this work as a piece of history is discussed, ? There are occasional touches of exaggeration or fancifulness, peculiar to oriental, especially Persian, writers ; but these are para- donable enough (eg. his description of ধুমঘাটের পুরী ০৮০). 19 book, however, was so highly regarded thatit was translated from original Bengali into the Marhatta language in 1816 (Roebuck op. cit. 48000. 115) and re-written by Hari§f Chandra Tark@laikir in 1853