Works written in Musalmani Bangala. The Saaskrit metres in Bengali. 804 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE, sword became, in course of time, united to us in love and good will. The works of Mahomedan writers mentioned in this book are all written in more or less sans- kritised Bengali, and not in that style known as Musulmanani Bangala, which shows an admixture of Urdu, Persian and Arabic words with corrupt Bengali. A vast literature of the rustic Mahomedans is to be found written in Musalmani Bangala, and there are many works of this class, some of which may be traced back to the 16th century. But for various reasons we have not found it convenient to include books written in Musalmani Bangala in the present work. ji. Mainly on style, literary tastes and language. The chief feature of the poetical literature dealt with in this chapter is its wealth of chhandas or metres adopted from Sanskrit. Though 11) the earlier epochs some of our writers had tried to intro- duce Sanskrit metres, their attempts were marked with that crudeness which often characterises the products of beginners. bahrata Chandra has done yeoman’s service to our literature by enriching it with various Sanskrit metres, some of which he imitated to perfection in Bengali. His ¢ofaka and bhujanga prayata are almost faultless—a success which could not have been anticipated in a lan- guage that seemed so unsuited as our own for the rich and varied metres of Sanskrit, especially as there is no distinction between long and_ short [ Chap.
