Page:Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar, a story of his life and work.djvu/186

Rh জনলোক তপলোক শান্তলোক এই সপ্ত স্বর্গ। * *। তেঁহ প্রথম পুরুষ। তার নাসাগ্রে ব্রহ্মাণ্ডের উৎপত্তি।”

The extract shows that the language had not attained much perfection. The full development and perfection, or otherwise, of a language is determined by the proper use and arrangement of adjectives, adverbs, verbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and other particles. It will be seen in the extract quoted above, that no attention has been bestowed on that point. The author of the book was Narottam Das. It is a booklet of eight pages dealing, in catechism form, with some principles of the Hindu Scripture. From the use of the word "তেঁহ" in the Nominative case, it may be inferred that it was written in the time of Chaitanya, or a little after that. However that might be, even taking it for granted, that this was the period of the birth of the Bengali language, it may be safely said, that English prose cannot boast of being much older.

Sir John Mandeveille is known to the literary world to be the father of English prose literature. His era has been determined to be between 1300 and 1371 A. D. The previous writings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries cannot be taken into account as forming parts of the English Literature. If we compare the structure of Mandeveille's language with that of modern English side by side,