Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/55

 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 31 ruined. They had not only lost the patronage at court and of the great landed aristocracy, who always revered their learning and piety, but they also found themselves losing, together with their ancient prestigs, the free charitable gifts of landed property to which they mainly looked up for their support. A regulation was passed in 1798 for enquiry into the validity of various existing Likheray grants: and as a direct result of this, many of these presum-d charitable grants were cancelled. This dealt a severe blow to the poor Brahmans, who thus shorn of their land and their glory, became more and more dependent than ever for their living on the gifts of the lower classes to whose tastes and superstitions they were now compelled to pander. The most enlighten- ed among them, no doubt, remained isolated or retired into obscurity in moody silence ; but the majority of them did everything in their power to please the mob, who were now almost their only customers. With the fall of the Brahmans, however, there was no doubt the rise of the powerful middle class ; but the ruin of this hereditary intellectual class was a loss in itself. The axe was laid at the root of ancient learning and ancient culture : the influence which produced the sublime in Hindu civilisa- tion vanished, the influence which produced the supersti- tious and the ridiculous in it increased. Such was the state of knowledge and culture at the beginning of the last century that Jayanarayan Tarkapanchinan in his preface to the Sarvadargana Savngraha had to lament that the pundits of his time never cared to read more than four books in their lifetime ; and just before the foundation of Caleutta Sanserit College, such was the ignorance of the Bengali pundits that none of them could enlighten Sir William Jones on the subject of ancient Sanscrit drama.