A new era, Correction of Ortho- graphy.
384 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [Chat lustre. The pomegranate fruit bursts when ripe, — owing to this feeling of shame.” These lines of Mukundarama, sounds a prelude to the style of which — Bharat Chandra in a later age was the finished — master. In the literature of this period there will be found instances of figures of speech and clever turns of thought borrowed from Sanskrit, shewing that a new era was dawning on our literature which — welcomed art in the place of nature, and valued — the rules of Sanskrit rhetoric more than the dictates — of the heart. Along with the resuscitation of Sanskrit words, — systematic efforts were being made to correct the | spelling of Bengali words, which still retained the forms prescribed by Prakrita Orthography. This— process along with that of Sanskritising words, has ever since been going on in our literature. There are many words of Sanskritic origin in Bengali even now which are spelt after the rules of Prakrita_ grammar; such for instance are the words কাজ, সোনা, কান 20 সাদা which are derived from the’ Sanskrit @ifj, 4 tf and @d respectively, but which still retain Prakrita spelling. The purists will, I am sure, ere long correct them. In old manuscripts we find innumerable instances of ¢&, BY214, fq which are no longer presented to us in such Prakrita forms. The M.S. of Chandi Kavya, be- lieved to be witten by Mukundarama himself, shows spellings of words which do not always conform to Sanskrit grammar ; but Mukundarama, it should be remembered, lived in an age when Prakrita forms of spelling were current in written Bengali,j—when the purists had just began to correct the Vernacular
