78 - BENGALI LITERATURE zealous preacher in Portuguese and to have translated large portions of the Book of Common Prayer and the Catechism into Bengali, entitled probvbly Pragno/tara- mila and Prarthanima/a. Wis books are said to have been published by the Society for the promotion of Christian Kuowledge and printed in London., Bento knew French, Portuguese, Bengali, and Hindusthani. He probably died in 1786 at the age of fifty eight. The date of publi- eation of his books is unknown. Nagendra Nath Basu gives 1765 as the date of publication of Prasnotfaramala ; 2 but this seems to be hardly eorrect, for Bento must have composed this work, after he was appointed Cate- chist, ¢.e. after 1766 (according to Hyde) or after 1768-69 (according to Carey). So far as we can trace, these are the earliest names on the list of foreign benefactors to the Vernacular Literature of Bengal. Bunt we do not find any serious and definitely important achievement in the field, until we come to the illustrious name of Nathaniel Brassey Halhed.3 Since 1772 the East India Company had actually taken upon itself the entire responsibilities of administra- tion; and this made it almost a necessity for its civil servants to study the vernacular of the country which they had now beenn to govern. About this time, Halhed, 1 For further details, see my paper in the Pratibha (Dacca), Magh, 1222 B.S. References to Bento will be found in Carne, Lives of Eminent Missionaries (London, 1833) in the article on Kiernander; also see John Zachariah Kiernander (Bap. Miss. Press, Cal. 1877).
- Bisvacosa. Art.. Bengali Language and Literature.
- The name is not Nathaniel Prassy Halhed, as given in Dinesh
Chandra Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, Calcutta, 1911, pp. 15, 848, 849.
- See the elaborate arguments set forth in the Preface (p. i-xxv)
to Halhed’s Grammar, in favour of the study of the Bengali language j by Europeans. See also Introduction to Forster’s Vocabulary. না
