Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/193

 | | PUNDITS AND MUNSIS 169 in those languages were taken as models of composition নি in Bengali, Sanserit wae chiefly confined to the exclusive class of learned Brahmans and curious scholars. Not only Persian and Urdu were learnt by the boys at school together with their mother-tongue, but even in ordinary conversation Persian words were extensively used. Six centuries of Mohammedan rule did not affect in any remarkable degree the manners and customs of the people but they succeeded in throwing the vernacular into the shade and strengthening the supreme authority of Persian and Arabic, from whose rich vocabulary the Bengali language had been borrowing ever since. Even up to the time of Ram Mohan, when the tendency to Sanscritised style was gradually growing into favour, the Persian ideal was not wholly discarded. Ram Mohan himself wrote his earliest work in Persian but he was also a_ profound scholar of Sanserit and his later Bengali style was therefore more sanseritised. Ram Basu, however, ০ in spite of Carey’s tribute to his adherence to Persian knowledge of Sanscrit, seems never ‘iia to have possessed that command over the language which his friend Ram Mohan eertainly did. But Ram Basu’s mastery over Persian and Arabic, which seem to have been his favourite subjects, was undoubted. Moreover, Ram Basu as we have pointed out, distinetly says at the beginning of his book that he has based his work upon certain historical treatises in Persian. It may be observed that in the description of wars and court affairs, the language of the day could not avoid a certain inevitable admixture of Persian. Ram Mohan’s subject-matter was religion, and his text the Sanserit Sastras; while Rim Basu’s interest, on the other hand, was in history and the Persian manuscripts 22