III. ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 149 moment of death, it is a duty always observed by the relatives to recite the name of Krisna in the ears of the dying. These love songs, therefore, as I have said, cannot be dissociated from their pervad- ing religious idea. Of Chandi Das and Vidyapati, it may be said 01121707085 that the one sings as impelled by nature,—his is a Videapatl cry from the depths of the soul; literary embellish- compared. ments are lost sight of; poetry wells up like a natural fountain, whose pure flow contains no
coarse grain of earth. The other is a conscious poet, anda finished scholar, whose similes and meta- phors are brilliant poetical feats; they at once captivate the ear, and the boldness of colour in the pictures, presented to the mind, dazzles the eyes. The scenes of sensuality, and lust are re- deemed by others which are platonic and spiritual, —a strange combination of holy and unholy, of earthly and heavenly. His earlier poems are full of sensualism,—his later, of mystic ideas. Chandi Das is a bird from the higher regions, where earthly beauties may be scant, but which is nearer heaven, for all that. Vidyapati moves all day in the sunny groves and floral meadows of the earth, but in the AM, evening rises high and overtakes his fellow poet.*
- Complete editions of the love-songs of Vid yapati and
Chandidas are expected shortly to be published with copious annotations by two Bengali scholars. Vidyapati is being edited by Babu Nagendra Nath Gupta under the patronage and directions of Babu Sarada Charan Mitter, late Judge of the Calcutta High Court and the credit of collecting a large number of hitherto unknown poems of Chandidas belongs to Babu Nilratan Mukherjee, Head Master, Kirmahar School in the district of Birbhum. Each of the two compilations will contain about a thousand poems or padas. -This is far ahead of the number of fadas hitherto extant in the country.
