XI] VERNACULAR LITERA TURE 433
teenth century). It is nowadays reckoned as a classic, and is
still chanted by professional bards. With the commencement
of the nineteenth century came a revival of Bengali literature
under English influence. Bengali prose was created-at first
a deformed pasticcio of Sanskrit words, held together here and
there by a vernacular pronoun or inflexion. The language
thus fabricated has developed into the literary Bengali of the
present day, regarding which see the chapter on Languages.
Its immediate parent was the theistic reform headed by Raja
Raim Mohan Rai, who is recognized as the father of Bengali
prose. He was followed by Akshay Kumir Datta, while Igwar
Chandra (Vidyasagar) (born i82o) devoted himself to social
reform upon orthodox Hindu lines. The enforced celibacy of
widows and the abuses of polygamy were his special objects of
attack. He was also the author of several early school-books,
which were once very popular; and his Charitiz-bali (a sort of
Indian Self-Help) was for many decades the first book in the
language read by officials appointed to Eastern India. The
best product of Bengali prose is its fiction. The founder of Bankim
the school was Bankim Chandra Chatterji (I838-94), whose Chandra.
first novel, the Durgieanandin&i, took the Indian literary world
by storm in the year i864. In I872 he started a high-class
literary magazine, the Baanga-darSan, which rapidly achieved
popularity, and in which many of his later novels first saw the
light. From the appearance of this magazine modern Bengali
prose takes its rise. It quite superseded the original pedantic
literary language, with its 'frigid conceits, traditional epithets,
and time-honoured phraseology,' and became an instrument of
considerable flexibility and polish, although still encumbered
with an unwieldy Sanskrit vocabulary. Bankim Chandra has
had numerous successors, the most versatile of w hom was
Pyari Chand Mittra (Tekchand Thakur), whose Alldlgr Gharer
Dul.l is (to European tastes) the best novel in the language.
In Bengali poetry of the nineteenth century, ISwar Chandra
Gupta (b. I809) was the forerunner of the modern school,
more catholic in its spirit than the products of earlier genera-
tions. His fame was overshadowed by that of Madhu Sfdan
Datt (I824-73), who now ranks higher in the estimation of
his countrymen than any Bengali poet of this or any pre-
vious age.
The Nil-darpan of DIna-bandhu-Mittra (I829-73) was the
most important dramatic work of this period. It was a picture
of the abuses of indigo-planting in the middle of the last
century, and appeared in i86o. Few plays have created a
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