Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/438

 414 BENGALI LITERATURE cannot indeed definitely state whether Ram-prasad was the first poet and devotee to realise this: for we find contem- poraneously with him a host of such song-writers as, either independently or influenced by him, wrote in the same strain. Raja Krsaachandra himself was a composer of such songs and we find the literary tradition maintained in the royal family by his two sons Sibehandra and Sambhichandra, as well as inferior members of the same family like Narachandra, Srigchandra, Nareschandra and others. A few songs of this style still remains which contain the dhanita of Maharaja Nanda Kumar. It cannot be said that all these song-writers were inspired by the example and influence of Ram-prasad; on the contrary, they might be following a course of religious and literary development which had begun independently but which was made so resplendent by the superior faith and genius of Ram-prasad. Whatever might be the fact, it cannot be denied that it was in Ram-prasad that this new form of adoration of the Supreme Being under the image of the Mother—a form naturally congenial to the Bengali tempe- rament—finds its characteristic expression and discovers a new, easy and natural mode of religious realisation through fine songs, reflecting intense religious feryour in the exceed- ingly human language of filial affection. The image of divine motherhood, to Ram-prasad and his followers, is not a mere abstract symbol of divine grace or divine chastise- ment but it becomes the means as well as the end of a definite spiritual realisation, Rising to the radiant white- heat of childlikeness, these poets realise in the emotions of the child the emotions of a devotee. Like the child, the poet is now grave, now gay, now petulant, now despairing, not with the capricious purposelessness of a child but with the deep intensity of purposeful devotion. Thus, not only Ram- prasad in his numerous songs but even his follower, Kumar