Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/487

 APPENDIX I 463 চৈতন্তরূপের রা চ অধরূপ লাড়ি। রা অক্ষরে রাগ লাড়ি। চ অক্ষরে চেতন লাড়ি। র এতে চ মিশিল রা এতে বসিল। ইবে এক অঙ্গ লাড়ি। রাগ রতি। লাড়ির নাম স্তুধা॥ সেই লাড়ি সাতাইশ প্রকার । will sufficiently indicate the same admixture of prose and verse-forms—and indeed we have a _ reference in the Padakalpataru 19 গগ্ভপঞ্যময় রচনা ০ 01781701085 but the sen- tences are shorter and the vocables more modern. The manuscript is dated 1674 and it is probable that the language does not go much earlier than that date. The frigid drip of doctrinaire talk—for it professes to explain fantrik theories in riddle-like language and brief aphor- istic sentences, almost always dropping the verband seldom running beyond three or four words at a time—does not seem to allow much scope for the prose either to run fluently or to evince any remarkable literary aptitudes. This bare dry fatiguing aphoristic manner is illustrated by a body of so-called philosophie writings relating to the Sahajiya cult, which belong in all (vend Wet dcxtary probability to the 17th and the 18th centuries. The first work that calls for mention in this group is the curious manuscript called Dehakadacha, attributed to Narottama Thakur, the text of which was published in the Sa/ztya Parisat Patrika (1804, no. 1, pp. 39-46). The date of the oldest manuscript is 1603 Saka (1681 A.D.) and this date as well as the similarity of style and manner would place the work in the age in which the last mentioned Chan: Idas apocrypha was written. The text of this manuscript, however, seems to be almost identical (making due allowance to trifling scribal and other variations) with that of Atma-jighasa, ascribed to Krsnadas, (Sahitya Parisat manuscript