Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/191

 PUNDITS AND MUNSIS 167 (1855) speaks of the book as “a work the style of which, a kind of mosaic, shewed how much unjust ascendancy of the Persian language had in that day corrupted the Bengali”. Mahaimahopadhyay Haraprasad Sastri, in one of his lectures, ' condemned the book as “unreadable” on account of its style. It can not be denied indeed that the style 7s “a kind of mosaic’’—a curious admixture of Bengali and Persian—quaint, affected, and involved ; and considered from the standpoint of purity, lucidity, or simplicity, its style is the worst that this period has to show in Bengali prose. It is true that Persian words occur more or less in every writing of this period, and we have seen fron Carey’s D/a/ogues published only a month after the book under review, Persian Preponderance of words preponderated especially in the Persian. নু colloquial language of a certain class of people ; but no other publication of this period is so much disfigured by Persian and Urdu words as Ram _ Basu’s Pratapiditya Charitra. The following extracts taken at random will bear out the above statement ; যেকালে দিল্লির তক্তে হোমাও, বাদসাহ তখন ছোলেমান ছিলেন কেবল বঙ্গ ও বেহারের নবাব পরে হোমাঙ, বাদসাহের ওফাত হইলে হেন্দোস্তানে বাদসাহ হইতে ব্যাজ হইল এ কারণ হোমাঙ, ছিলেন বৃহত গোষ্ঠী তাহার অনেক গুনিল (গুলিন) সন্তান তাহারদের আপনারদের মধ্যে আত্মকলহ হইয়া বিস্তর বিস্তর ঝকড়1 লড়াই কাজিয়া উপস্থিৎ ছিল ইহাতে সুবাজাতের at the Sabitri Library (Published in BangadarSan, vol. vii and viii, 1287-88 B. S). He uses the words "'অপাঠ্য @#4” in connexion with this work, which appellations, however, are rather too strong. It is a significant fact that Dr. Yates in his Selection from Bengali Literature of this period (Introduction to the Bengali Language, 1847, vol. ii) does not quote a single extract from Pratapaditya Charitra, for its style seems to have been regarded as not worth study or attention.
 * Lecture on Bengali Literature in the Present Century (in Bengali),