Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/226

 202 BENGALI LITERATURE classics was unrivalled, and his Bengali composition has never been superseded for ease, simplicity and vigour. Mr. Carey sat under his instruction Relation to Carey. two or three hours daily while in Caleutta, and the effect of this intercourse was speedily visible in the superior accuracy and purity of his (08051000571, He was specially attached to Carey and it was at Carey’s suggestion that he undertook the literary works which constitute his chief contribution to Bengali literature and language.? The literary labours of Mrtyufijay, embracing almost the whole of this decade (1802-1813), wa fos consist, besides a Defence of Idolatory and a treatise on the Hindu Law of Inheritance*, of the following four publications, of which ‘ Carey never, however, was influenced by Mrtyufjay’s pompous, affected, sanscritised language. His native instinct for realism saved him from this extreme. and when the agitation about Sat? was at its height and the whole body of law-pundits wrote of it as “permitted,” Mrtyufijay gave his opinion that, according to Hinduism, a life of mortification rather self-immolation was the law for a widow. connected with Bengali Literature. (1855), p. 185. This work, Defence of Idolatory, as mentioned by Long, seems to have been the same as the Bedanta Chandrika against which Ram-mohan Ray wrote 0015 ভষ্টাচাধ্যের xfee fasta (1817) and his English tract “A Second Defence of the Monotheistical System of the Veds in Reply to an Apology for the present State of Hindu Worship” (1817). Says Miss Collect: Head Pundit of the Government College at Calcutta, Mrityunjoy Vidyalankar, who published a tract called Vedanta Chandrika.” (Life and Letters of Raja Rammohan Roy,p. 23. See also Nagendranath Chatterji, Life of Rammohan Ray in Bengali, p. 103). The Bedanta Chandrika was printed both in Bengali and in English, and defended the current form of idolatorous Hinduism against Ram-mohan’s party. It shows
 * Mrtyufijay was also one of the jurists of the Supreme Court ;
 * Rev. J. Long, Return of the Names and Writings of 515 Persons
 * Another defendant of Hinduism appeared some months later in the