Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/340

 316 BENGALI LITERATURE the habitual and unreflecting faith of the people, unaffected by any scholastic or sectarian pre- ee ig possessions, that supplied the chief sectarian. Ingredient of Kabi-poetry. In this sense, Kabi-literature is neither scho- 17860 nor cultured, nor is it factitious and professional. None of the Kabiwalas was literate enough to enter into the intricacies of emotional or metaphysical subtlety nor had they any sectarian tradition behind to implant in them anythiug other than its simple spiritual significance which had percolated and spread down even to the masses. They had taken Baisnabism ex masse and not in its details, in its essence and not in its accidents, though they tacitly accepted and mechanically repeated its conceits and its imagery, its time-honoured dogmas and doctrines. It would be unjust to institute a comparison between the Baisnab lyrics and the songs of the Kabiwalas ; but it must be noted that the latter in many cases debased and vulgarised, while they borrowed, the ideas and concep- tions of Baisnab poetry. One particular section of Baisnab poetry, remarkable for its passion and its poetic quality, which is generally grouped under the heading of Prema-baichitta (caatafee) is practically non-existent in Kabi-literature. Unable to enter into its subtlety, its romautic fervour and its mystic spiritualism, the Kabiwalas could not speak in the same rapturous accents nor with the same nobility of sentiment. It is true that both these species of literature were never intended originally to be literature at all ; they never consisted of deliberate literary creation by self-conscious artists, Kabi-poetry is not a deliberate literary creation of self-con- hand, and popular amusement, on the scious artists. ° : . other, supplied the motive of its making in each case ; and in so far as each species adhered Religious enthusiasm, on the one