Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/140

118 one letter) and not a letter which is the unit in a Bengali word, should never be lost sight of. How is it that consistently with or rather in harmony with the phenomenon, that our metrical system is grounded on a syllabic and accentual basis, a fixed number of letters come in a chanda, will be explained presently, after considering some facts leading to the point.

To explain the character of Bengali syllables, let me set forth some words with their syllable divisions by marking the syllables off, by the sign hyphen: মা-নুষ, আ-সা-মের, বন্-ধু (বন্ধু), অ-হং-কার, etc., will show that there may be less number of syllables than the number of letters in a word. Mr. J. D. Anderson has rightly remarked with reference to our phrase accents as well as in respect to the syllables in a word, that this special aspect of phrase accent in a word, "is sufficiently dominant to be the basis of accentual verse in Bengali." Mr. Anderson has very successfully demonstrated what I once feebly pointed out in a Bengali essay, that the assertion of our Paṇdits, that the পয়ার metre is not composed of syllables but of fourteen letters, is wrong. The two lines quoted by Mr. Anderson from Kṛttivāsa in J. R. A. S., 1913, 861, may be cited to show, that the lines of fourteen letters consist of twelve and thirteen syllables respectively, and that the verse moves on with syllables and not with letters. The lines, as accented by Mr. Anderson stand as:

It will be noticed that it is the accent on লেন of গেলেন in the second line, which has given the easy motion required by the rhythm, and by virtue of accents, lines of seemingly unequal syllables have agreed in the metre. I adduce now another example, to illustrate our metrical system.