458 BENGALI LITERATURE কোন মাসে কোন রাসি। বৈশাখ মাস মেস রাসি। হে বস্্রদেব বার ভাই বার আদিত্ত হাথ পাতি লেহ সেবকর পুপ্নপানি । সেবক হব সুথি আমনি ধামাৎ কন্নি। গুরু পণ্ডিত দেউলা দানপতি eq ভোক্তা আমনি সন্গ্যাসী (? সন্নাসী ) গতি জাইতি গাএন বাএন ছুআরি দুআরপাল ভাগ্ারী ভাগ্ারপাল রাজদৃত কোমি কোটাল পাবেক স্থথ মুকতি। এহি দেউলে পড়িব জঅ জআকার। দাতা দানপতির বিদ্ব জাব নাস। কোন মাস কোন রাসি। বৈসাথ গেলে জৈট মাসে বুস রাসি। and so forth through all the months of the year in the same strain. On first reading this fantastic piece of apparently unrhythmical writing would hardly seem to be prose at all: and it has been doubted if it is prose or verse or none, or a curious admixture of the two. But a careful study will make it clear that is not verse in any sense but probably prose, although it may be prose of a kind unfami- liar to us, and that it has a distinet Close_relation of rhythm of its own. When carefully prose and verse in old Bengali literature examined, this and other passages, if the text is correct, will reveal that here for the first time there is a perception, however faint, of the existence of distinct styles of prose and verse, although the instruments of the two harmonies may not have been very clearly differentiated.'. In_ order to understand the } All these speculations are based on the assumption that what the passages embody is really prose. They have been always taken as such, but my own suspicion is that they are really verse-lines, perhaps imperfectly recorded fragments, not properly examined or shifted with care when the text was edited and printed from the original Mss. Unfortunately I had no access to the original manuscript, in the posses- sion of the editor, upon which the text is chiefly based, and had to depend entirely upon the Sahitya Parisat edition which is anything but what scientific scholarship would desire, There is no attempt to render ১
