344. BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. © A dark The period was indeed a dark one for Bengal. বি The Muhammadan autocrats were making their history. power felt. In the Padma Puran of Vijay Gupta we find good Brahmins with sandal marks on their foreheads and Tulsi leaves on their heads, being bound and dragged before the Kaziand there put to abject humiliation for no fault. We quote the following passage from Von Neor’s Akbar. ‘When the Collector of the Dewan asks them (the Hindoos) to pay the tax, they should pay it with all humility and submission: and if the Collector wishes to spit into their mouths, they should open their mouths without the slightest fear of contamination so that the Collector may do so. The object of such humiliation and spitting into their mouths is to prove the obedience of the infidel subjects under protection and promote if possible the glory of Islam,—the true religion and to show contempt to false religion.” We have already described how, owing to the oppression of Mamud Sherif in Pergunnah Selima- bad, the poet had been obliged to leave his native village. We have seen how, while describing a ficticious warfare between Kalketu and the beasts, The human : মা interest in Mukundaram unconsciously represented the politi- his poem. a] condition of his country. Itisthis reality which
saves his poem from dullness even in the minutest details of the story. As in the case of the beasts, so also in the description of natural scenery, the human world constantly recurs ; andin whatever he sees on earth or heaven, he finds human society first and everything else in its light. Here is an extract from one of his descriptions of a flower-covered meadow.
