Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/9

 PREFACE

With the object of drawing the attention of scholars to the comparatively uncultivated field of Bengali Literature, I have in the present volume embodied the results of some of my researches into it. ‘hese investigations were first undertaken in 1912-1913, chiefly for the purpose of my essay for the Griffith Memorial Prize for Original Research for 1915 and were subsequently worked up into a thesis for Premehand Roychand Research Studentship, for which it was approved in 1918. In selecting the nineteenth century for treatment out of all other periods, I am actuated by several considerations. In the first place, the nineteenth century possesses a peculiar interest for us. It is the period of British influence on Indian thought, and one which witnessed a new awakening and the growth and building up of modern Bengal and modern Bengali Literature. The importance of this period in all its aspects, political, social, religious, as well as literary, can never be exaggerated. It is to be regretted, however, that we possess no adequate and connected infor- mation about the period and the literature in which, indeed, the civilisation of modern Bengal can be traced and without which that civilisation cannot be fully understood. I have not heard of any scholar who has yet made the nineteenth century literature his special study and written any special account of it. The earliest attempts at writing a connected account of Bengali Literature—the Bengali discourse of Rajnarayan Basu and the little pamphlet of Ganga Charan Sarkar—were meant chiefly as popular lectures rather than any comprehensive and synthetic study