Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/328

 304 BENGALI LITERATURE at present find only scattered abroad a few fragments which may convey a knowledge of this literature but which are insufficient to familiarise us with it so as to enable us either to appreciate its beauty, construct its history or determine its value. Informations about the lives of these Kabiwalas or with regard to the general history of Kabi-poetry are extremely scanty ; what re- mains consists of a few traditional stories, often useless and ill-authenticated. When we consider the peculiar conditions under which most of these songs were composed and the mode in which they were transmitted we can, to Why the literature some extent, understand why a very was not preserved, - small and fragmentary part of this literature has come down tous. These Kabis were not properly speaking, leisured and accomplished men of letters, cultivating literature for its own sake, and their productions were not deliberate Peculiar method af Jiterary compositions meant for a composition and mode ee রর of transmission. critical audience. Their very name Diindi = Kabi ( Aetefa )? indicates perhaps the peculiar way in which they extemporised their songs, standing like a rhapsodist before a motley assembly, although it is difficult to say from what time exactly this appellation was first applied to them. The evil days of the latter half of the 18th century, we have seen, necessitat- ed the growth of a class of “poets” whose calling had 1 It seems that this epithet is very old: but according to one version the epithet Dada Kabi was applied to distinguish Kabi from Hap-akhdai, which was a _ hybrid species, formed out of Kabi and akhdai, and which was therefore a kind of basa@-kabi. (Preface to Manomohan Gitabali, written by Manomohan Basu himself.) But see Janma-bhimi, vii, p. 58,