Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/332

 308 BENGALI LITERATURE in the earlier days of British supremacy, had brought into existence, as we have seen, a class of up-start landlords and speculators who stepped into their places but who could not be expected to possess the same inherited tradi- tion of culture and refinement as marked the ancient aris- toeracy of the land. The commercial banians, Seths, and merchants, on the other hand, in the new flourishing cities, now growing into importance, constituted them- selves a class of patrons who demanded literature, not of a fine stuff but that which could afford them momentary excitement of pleasure in the intervals of engrossing business. The new public had neither the leisure, the capacity nor the willingness to study or appreciate any re- production of the finer shades and graces of earlier poetry. This was the audience! for whom, in the main, the Kabi- walas sang their songs, and it is no wonder that the tone and temper of the literature they pro- reacted upon itand duced was debased through this un- contributed to its de- : 5 holy contact. This debasement was complete in the next generation when with the spread of western education and consequent re- volution in taste, these songs had been banished totally from ‘respectable’ society and descended to the lower classes who demanded a literature suited to their uneducated ‘ The suggestion (Dinesh Chandra Sen, History, p. 697) that the low caste of the songsters show that the institution was essentially for the amusement of the illiterate rustics who formed its chief audience, is hardly borne out by facts. This form of entertainment obtained specially in urban centres like Chandannagar, Chinsurah and Calcutta and most of the Kabiwalas were not rural rustics but men bred up in the cities. Ram Basu, Hara Thakur, Nitai Bairagi and indeed the whole host of them lived in Caleutta or in the neighbouring cities. Kabi-poetry itself, if not completely urban, is however devoid of all stamps of rusticity, sade tinea