Page:The Bengali Book of English Verse.djvu/40



The Captive Ladie is the most considerable verse production in English from the pen of a Bengali writer. For this reason alone it deserves more lengthy representation than other works. Concerning its theme the author himself writes:—

"The following tale is founded on a circumstance pretty generally known in India, and, if I mistake not, noticed by some European writers. A little before the famous Indian expedition of Mahmud of Ghuzni, the King of Kanauj celebrated the "Raj-shooio Jugum" or, as I have translated it in the text, the "Feast of Victory." Almost all the contemporary Princes, being unable to resist his power, attended it, with the exception of the King of Delhi, who, being a lineal descendant of the great Pandu Princes—the heroes of the far-famed Mahabharat of Vyasa—refused to sanction by his presence the assumption of a dignity—for the celebration of this Festival was an universal assertion of claims to being considered as the lord paramount over the whole country—which by right of descent belonged to his family alone. The King of Kanauj highly incensed at this refusal, had an image of gold made to represent the absent chief. On the last day of the Feast, the King of Delhi, having, with a few chosen followers, entered the palace in disguise, carried off this image, together, as some say, with one of the Princesses Royal whose hand he had once solicited but in vain, owing to his obstinate maintenance of the rights of his ancient house. The fair Princess, however, was retaken and sent to a solitary castle to be out of the way of her pugnacious lover, who eventually effected her escape in the disguise of a Bhat or Indian Troubadour. The King of