Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/243

 PUNDITS AND MUNSIS 219 of the alphabet, rules of grammar, rhetoric, law, logic, astronomy, and polities, and various other branches of useful knowledge and finishing the whole by salutary instructions illustrated by popular tales. The book is indeed a monument of learning and written also in. a learned language. But the book, inspite of its learning, has no system and the writer is almost wholly devoid of all artistic instincts of proportion or arrange- Want of system and arrangement. ment. The serious is mingled up with the comic, abstruse metaphysical speculation is put side by side with the low talk of peasants, mechanics and quarrelsome women, and often there is a sudden and ludicrous descent from the most pedantic and laboured language to the extreme vulgarity of the popular dialect. It is indeed a hoteh-poteh—a curious collection of tales and serious essays, bound together by a very slender thread. Nor is the language of the book all that could be 7248 desired. In the preface to the work Marshman remarks very significantly that “any person who can comprehend the present work and enter into the spirit of its beauties, may justly consider himself master of the language.’ But to comprehend the present work would mean some familiarity with Sanscrit, without which the book would not be easily intelligible, and there can be no doubt that this grounding in Sanserit would certainly help much in acquiring a com- mand over the more literary aspects of the language. But the tendency to sanscritising has been carried to the extreme. Indeed Prabodh-chandriki exemplifies Its importance and 3 position in the historic one important aspect of the develop- development of prose style ment of prose style in this period and brings into clear relief the long- continued struggle between the plain and the ornate style