Mayur
Pandit,
18th cen-tury A.D.
Bengaliliterature:
its geo-graphicalarea;
and
linguistic
features.
record to show that Tukaram had any education. The factof his having been initiated into his business at the early ageof thirteen shows that he knew nothing more than the ordinarycalculations which a Bania is required to know. In theseAbhangas, Tukaram expounded the doctrines of the Vedasand the Puranas. The earnestness with which Tukaram began to sing, attracted to him men of all sects and castes.People began to look upon him as a teacher from heaven.They forgot at that time that he was a Sudra, and they beganto pay him the homage that is usually given to a Brahman.The Shastras say—One who knows Brahma is a Brahman,—and people seem to have followed this doctrine in the case ofTukaram .’ His fame spread widely during his life as a holyman and a religious teacher; his poems and hymns are repeatedby thousands of devout Hindus in Southern India to this day.
In the 18th century, Mayur Pandit or Moropanth pouredforth his copious Marathi song in strains which some regardas even more elevated than the poems of Tukaram .
Besides its accumulations of religious verse, Marathi pos-sesses a prose literature, among which the chief compositionsare the Bakhars or Annals of the Kings. It is also rich inlove songs, and farcical poetry of a broad style of wit.
Bengali is, in some respects, the most modern of the Indian vernaculars. As a spoken language, it begins on the north,where Hindi ends on the south ; that is to say, in the Gangeticvalley below Behar. From Rajmahal on the north to theBay of Bengal, and from Assam on the east to Orissa on thewest, Bengali forms the speech of about 50 millions of peoplein the valleys and deltas of the Brahmaputra and the Ganges .The language exhibits clearly-marked dialectical modificationsin the north, the east, and the west, of this great area. Butfor literary purposes, Bengali may be regarded as a linguisticentity. Indeed, literary Bengali of the modem type is tosome extent an artificial creation . Much more than theHindi , it has enriched itself by means of words directly im-ported from the Sanskrit . Such words not only supply thephilosophical, religious, and abstract terms of Bengali litera-ture, but they enter largely into the every-day language ofthe people. This is to some extent due to the circumstancethat the Bengalis have very rapidly adopted Western ideas.With the introduction of such ideas arose the necessity for newterms; and for these terms, Bengali writers naturally turnedtowards the Sanskrit .