Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/334

 310 BENGALI LITERATURE in the case of the sonnet, to definite rules of line-arrange- ment, general structure and rhyme-ending. In later times, with the introduction of lively /Aap-akhdar and kheud, the more studied structure of earlier songs were replaced by a mode of utterance, off-hand but effective in its unexpectedness and vigorous vulgarity, defiant of all laws and lost to every sense of artistic composition. We hear of the existence of disputants or two opposing ‘parties’ who took up different aspects of a particular theme and replied to each other in songs, even from the very earliest time when this form of amusement had sprung into existence ;and it was probably _ these passados in the bout of poetical dialectics which had lent in the popular mind a piquaney and zest to these songs and had thus made them preferable perhaps to yafras and pamchalis which did not include such ‘wit-combats’ in their scope. But in the earlier period, a consultation used to be held between the parties and the themes and ‘replies’ were made ready before they were sung. It was Ram Basu, a later Kabiwala, who first introduced the innovation of extempore and free verbal fight between the parties.' From his time, these ‘flytings’ of the Kabi- walas had become, in the proper sense, unpremeditated ; and as such, they had come to possess all the qualities and defects of unpremeditated compositions. The unexpected turns of phrases, the clash of witticism, the pungent raci- ness of colloquial vulgarity were no doubt pleasing to the mob: but what is good rhetoric for the groundlings is bad for literature. We can never expect any literary tinish or artistic grace in compositions which the necessity of quick and witty reply had brought into existence and ‘ Prachin Kabi-samgraha, ed. Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay, B.S, 1284, Introduction, p. ii.