338 BENGALI LITERATURE a greater degree. When seen in print these delightfully melodious things lose much of their appeal. It may be urged that this element should be ngidly ruled out of court in a strictly literary estimate ; but it must not be forgotten that the fame of most of these Kabiwalas rests more upon their musical than upon their literary capacity, for some of them were trained musicians, not ill at verbal numbers but possessing considerable knack of composing what are rather disrespectfully called “ words, ” and that the song-element preponderates in the various forms of ancient literature from Baisnab poetry down to tappa, yatra, pamchali and therefore cannot be totally ignored in any estimate of old Bengali literature or its offshoot. This brings ts naturally to the question of the prosodic range of Kabi-poetry and the arrange- Its system of versi- ment of its numbers, its metrical fication. system being closely connected with the conditions of its musical expression. At first sight the verse-system of the Kabiwalas seem to follow no defi- nite 1ule of arrangement ; and this has been more than once severely denounced by puzzled critics.‘ The lines vary in leneth, are very apparently irregular in rhythm, imper- fect in structure and uncertain in accentual or literal or syllabie arrangements ; but a careful study will show that there is some sort of harmony in the midst of this apparent discord. It is, no doubt, true that in some of the Kabiwalas there is a hopeless indifference to prosodic regulations ; that with regard to the number of words, syllables or accents required in each line, there is no hard and fast rule; and that as such it is impossible to analyse the
- See for instance the remarks of Rabindranath Thakur in Sadhana
(1302 B. S.), pt. ii, p. 65, reprinted in his Lok-Sahitya under the - heading ‘ Kabi-Sanhgit’ at p. 44.
