Page:Vidyasagar, the Great Indian Educationist and Philanthropist.djvu/59

 an easy, elegant, powerful style. It was immediately answered by more protests. Even the words of sage Parâshara fixed upon by Vidyasagar as sanctioning remarriage were construed by the learned Pundits in a different way. It seemed to them that he had purposely misread the lines. By then the agitation was not confined amongst the Pundits alone. The rich and the poor, the young and the old, the literate and the illiterate, were all drawn together by a common fear. Most of the vernacular periodicals published sharp criticisms. The famous bards of the day pilloried Vidyasagar. Even the peasants, fiddlers, hawkers, cab-men, all sang at their work ballads despising the uncanonical innovation. The weavers of Santipur (Nadia) wove satirical songs on the borders of ladies' cloth.

An important development followed. When Vidyasagar saw that attempts at persuading his countrymen into his own way of thinking served no useful purpose, he altered his tactics and tried to convince the