710 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap, (b) Religious Songs. Twenty-five years ago, in the twilight on the river Khoyai in Sylhet, I saw a boatman rowing a small boat, and as he rowed he sang:
- “Take back thine oar, O boatman, I can
no longer ply it; all my life I have struggled to bear my boat upstream, but backwards it has gone inspite of me, and now in my old age The boat- | find my efforts gone for naught. The prow of man’s song re - the boat is broken, and the planks are falling away. It can no longer be kept from sinking.” This means that he had fought with his passions all his life trying to control them, and bring the mind under discipline ; but he could not. And now when life’s ebb-tide was setting in, the despairing boatman could only call upon the Lord to take the charge of the boat of his life for him, conscious as he was of his own incapacity to control it, at the last moment. This song, which | heard at Habiganj in Sylhet, “ may be heard sung by the rustic folk at Mymen- ৩ sing and Dacca and even here in Calcutta. Spirituality This clear idea of self-control as the supreme in rustic. ; : : ই life. good, isnot confined in the country to the literate and higher classes. Through long years of the spread of Buddhism and the Vedanta Philosophy, it has filtered down to the lowest stratum of society, and illiterate villagers realise the deepest meaning of this spiritual truth, no less than men of rank and learning.
- মন মাঝি তোর বৈঠা নেরে, আমি আর বাইতে পারি না।
জনম ভরে বাইলাম তরী রে, তরী ভাহটায় ০সায়ায় উজায় না॥ নায়ের গুড়া ভাঙ্গা, ছাপ্পর লড়া রে, আমি আর বাহতে পারি না॥”
