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set fire to the whole fabrie of Buddhism by applying their torches at the most inflammable points of the older fabric. Buddhism and Jainism which is a link between it and Brahmanism, had brought the Banyas to the. front ranks in the political arena. The kings of Gujarat had Banyas for their ministers and the new religion of the Brahmans took them into its fold by consulting their tastes and tempers. in settling its details. It went further and addressed itself to the instincts of womankind as the most powerful factor in stimulating. society. It could also supply poets with beautiful tales. and incidents which, -when turned int> song, should revolutionise the faith of the whole society. When the first great poets of Gujarat began to sing, such were the materials that had kindled their souls and made them, unable to contain them within themselves. And accord- ingly we find them, all on a sudden and in the first half. of the fifteenth century, bursting forth into. poems whose melody of verse, sweetness of language, intensity of both pathos and sentiment, and fervour of religion, have never yet been surpassed in the language.
There were two great and two minor poets in Gujarat in the fifteenth century. Of the two latter one has translated the great Sanskrit romance of Kadambari, and the other has boiled down what he
calls the work of Bop-Dev, and by which he probably a :
