Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/85

 INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 61 intellectual activities in the country. It is not in the least degree correct to say, as it has been often enthusiasti- eally said, that it is the missionary, especially Dr. Carey, who created modern Bengali Literature. The creation of modern literary Bengali covers a period of more than half a century from Carey’s time and literary style, in the strict sense of the term, was not attained until a generation later when a band of youthful Bengali writers had come into the field, equipped in all the wealth of the new knowledge. It is true, indeed, (57151 that the missionaries gave an impetus and general culture. to vernacular writing when it was generally neglected. But at the same time it must be borne in mind that we cannot fasten the parentage of modern Bengali upon the missionaries only, much less upon Dr. Carey alone, and that literature was never the sole object of the European writers but education or evangelisation. If their work fostered literature, it was not due to any definite intention on their part to do so, but it was an incidental result of what they had done for the revival of education in Bengal. A national literature, whether ancient or modern, is the outeome of a long process of development and even Carey himself had realised very early that, in spite of the efforts of the foreigners, the best way of building up such a literature would be inducing the children of the soil themselves to take to earnest literary work. The missionary, even if he is a talented man like Carey, did hardly produce anything strictly deserving the name of literature. The importance of the missionary-work in Bengali does not lie in this ; the literature of to-day is work not of Carey, Halhed, or Forster but of the people of the soil, of Mrtyunjay, of Ram-mohan, of Batkim-chandra, of Michael Madhusidan. The missionaries, however, did a great work in the first