MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 433 Jaynarayan himself, giving a more or less faithful picture of contemporary Benares drawn from the poet’s own observa- tion. The work itself is a tedious and laborious compilation but this supplementary account, which is the best part and Hie" Kast-paritrama which has been published separately under the title of A&z-partkramda, is indeed very interesting as a good specimen of deseriptive poetry of this period. The topography and other details of the holy city are given with elaborate care, and in places the descriptions are original, amusing and considerably realistic. The partkramas are not rare things in old Bengali literature and we have Nadbadvipa Parikramaé and Brajaparikrama of Narahari Chakrabarti anda prose Brndabana Parikrama belonging to the 18th century. With these works of the same nature A@si-parikrama does not compare unfavour- ably, and as a more or less trustworthy contemporary account of the holy city, the work is certainly valuable. But from the strictly literary point of view, it seems to possess little interest or importance. Jaynarayan is a facile and methodical versifier but he is hardly a poet. The pictorial nature of his theme no doubt afforded many opportunities for higher poetical flights but the author is so entirely devoid of the soaring gift that he is uniformly and hope- lessly pedestrian, although occasionally he gives us undoubtedly vigorous descriptive verses. He has no fancy, no enthusiasm and his over-praised composition! is often merely prosaic and always rigidly conventional. The only praise which he deserves relates to the fact that although he adheres both in spirit and form to the traditions and expectations of the time, he yet devotes a stern attention to the realities of scenery and character described. His pietures, however, sadly lack a touch of that light which
‘Dinesh Chandra Sen, in Histor y, loc. cit. in Sahitya, loc. cit.; Nagendra- nath Basu, preface to the Sahitya Parisat edition of Kasi-Parikrama, 55
