Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/338

 314 BENGALI LITERATURE It is not our purpose here te enter into details but any student of ancient Bengali literature is well aware that Baisnab poetry cannot be very strictly described as simple and unsophisticated ; for although it can to-day be enjoyed as pure poetry or as the expression of fervent religious longings in the language of human passion, it can never be regarded as the spontaneous pro- The spirit of Baisvab duct of an uncritical and ingenuous poetry and its psycho- 5 logicaland metaphysi- faith. This: religious-amatory poetry cal formalism. presupposed a psychology and a metaphysic which had been reduced to an elaborate system and which possessed a peculiar phraseology and a set of conceits of its own. The romantic commonplaces of Baisnab poetry, familiar to any reader not only through its poetry but also through elaborate rhetorical treatises like Ujjvala-Nilamani or elaborate semi-metaphysical works like Sat-sandarbha or Hari-bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, arein a sense factitious, professional and sectarian, if not doctrinaire or didactic. Many of the famous Baisnab poets, no doubt, got out of their conventional material the kind of effect which appeals to us most strongly and there is the sheer force of poetic inspiration in many of them which lifts their poetry into the highest level of artistic utterance, yet all the floods of their lyric and romantic idealism cannot altogether cover their psychological formalism, their rhetoric of ornament and coneeits, their pedantry of metaphysical sentimentalism. The endless diversity of amorous condition grouped conveniently under man, mathur, the other as both existed simultaneously throughout the course of their literary history. The other theory (Janma-bhimi, vii., p. 58) that Kabi was originally a part of Pamecha@li is more or less open to similar objec- tions, The exact significance of the term Pamcha@li itself is uncertain ; what character it possessed in earlier times is not definitely known.