INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT 49 and flourishing town was being built up’ ; and attracted by its commercial importance, of which, notwithstanding the monopoly of the Company and its discouragement of private enterprise, Stavorinus, writing so far back as 1770, bears strong testimony, many Bengali families as well as men of other nationalities began to settle down. From the time of the inroads of the Mah- Intellectual and rattas, people had fled from the interior social centres spring- ing upalong বা চন and settled down on the banks of ee close to the Ganges, close to Caleutta, where in course of time, there arose several flourishing towns while the rest of Bengal lay under disorder and misrule. Bengal in the times past had many capitals and many centres of learning, and all these now converged to the few spots along the Ganges- bank and chiefly to the metropolis. It is natural to expect that here, with Caleutta as its centre, began the earliest efforts to diffuse knowledge, reform abuses, formu- late new ideas, and build up a new order of society and literature. From this arises the importance of the metro- polis in later Bengali literature—an importance which will be more fully realised when we consider that refined Importance of the city Utbanity is one of the main character- and the metropolisin jsties which differentiates the modern later Bengali _liter- : / hy ature. literature from its pre-British prede- cessor. If the ancient literature, as one of its historians says, was a gift of the lower to the higher classes and was fostered chiefly in the remote and _ secluded
‘ On the history and topography of old Calcutta, literature is scat- tered and plentiful. One may however consult with advantage A. K. Roy, A Short History of Calcutta; Rainey, Topographical and Historical Sketch of Calcutta, 1876; Busteed, Echoes from Old Calcutta ; Cotton, Calcutta Old and New; articles in Bengal Past and Present and references given therein; Long, Caleutta in Olden time, 7
