| f VI. ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 743 villagers. The farcical scenes which were intro- duced at intervals were generally called 4, and the children who accompanied their mothers to the place of performance, and who could not under- stand anything of the main play, were greatly in- terested in Hs. In fact they would doze the whole of the time that was occupied in the enact- ment of the serious portions of the performance, and hailed these farcical scenes with great delight, noting each point with gaping mouths, and some- times indicating their high gratification by the merry sounds of juvenile laughter.
0 V. The three great poets with whom the age closed— Dacarathi—Ramanidhi Gupta—I¢wara Gupta.
Before we close the narrative of our old literature, and enter upon that which is stamped with English influence, we propose to say something about a few more writers of the old school, and notice the folk tales prevalent in the country from ancient times. Let us first deal with the three poets who lived in the early part of the roth cen- tury. Though by the time they flourished, Eng- lish rule had become settled in the country, yet their writings bear no traces of European influence. They belonged to the old school and exercised a great influence on contemporary society and litera- ture. These; three -poets are 41. Dacarathi Rai 2. Ramnidhi Gupta and 3. I¢wara Chandra Gupta. Dacarathi R4i was born at Vandgmura in Bur- dwan in the year 1804. His father Devi Prasada Rai was a man of small means. So the young poet lived with one of his maternal uncles at the village of Pila where he ultimately settled. He Dacarathi Rai.
