v
Chandra, and it was the one with which he set to work. The aspect of a novelist's function which struck him most was that of a teacher and never in his writings does he forget his avocation of a born teacher of his people.
He was well fitted to fill the place. With nature's liberal endowment was joined in him a sound education in the literature of the past as well as in the ideas of the new civilisation which was yet only skimming the surface of Indian life. At this time English culture was knocking at India's gate and the vast wealth of India's ancient civilisation was waiting to be unearthed. The man who would seek to lead the people at such a time was one who knew how to manage both and could find a proper scope for the functions of each. Bankim Chandra was by his education well fitted for the task, for which nature did not gruge him a generous endowment of genius.
He was one of the earliest and best fruits of English education in India and his life-work was a sustained endeavour to bring about a synthesis of the ideals of the East and the West in the life of the Indian on lines so eloquently set forth in the concluding chapter of the present work. It was this ideal he consistently had in view and it was this lesson which he has sought to impart in a great many of his novels.
A novelist is always a teacher, but the teacher should not overshadow the story-teller. This golden rule Bankim Chandra fairly follows in most of his works. But in his Abbey of Bliss the teacher is much too evident. The result is assuredly a great take-off from its merit as a novel per se and, taken as such, this work is certainly defecient. But it is everywhere too evident that the author does not care to be taken as a story teller at all. The story is only the setting. The whole interest is concentrated in the message that he seeks to impart and
