i ie a EARLIEST EUROPEAN WRITERS 73 an historian of Bengali literature, lies in its being the first important and sustained Bengali composition by a European author.! It gives us the earliest specimen of “Missionary Bengali”, as it had existed about a century and a half before Carey, Marshman and their colleagues took the field; and its Bengali is certainly more homely and well-written than the stiff and groping language of ? Carey’s Dharmapustak. One is: tempted to quote speci- mens at greater length from this interesting work but space forbids quotation of more than one or two illustrative extracts. 2 ‘ Father Guérin, who brought out an edition of this work from Chandan-nagar in 1836, states in the Latin preface to that edition that the Portuguese portion only was written by Manoel, while the Bengali portion was the work of some Bengali Christian at Bhawal. But of this there is no evidence. Father Guérin’s edition, a copy of which was lent to me by Father L. Wauters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Dharmatala, Calcutta, is interesting, though its Bengali is certainly not soremarkable. It is published in Bengali characters and named কপার শাস্ত্রের অর্থবেদ (০৮ ভেদ). It is entirely re-written and remodelled and there is a Latin preface, Nearly two-thirds of the original is ex- punged as being apocryphal and objectionable while three new dialogues are added, also a list of solar and lunar eclipses calculated for Bengal from L816 to 1904, The scope and contents of the work will be sufficiently explained by its title: Catéchisme | suivi , de trois dialogues | et de la liste | des Eclipses de soleil et de lune | calculées pour la Bangale a partir de 1836 jusqn’en 1904 inclusivement. , Nouvelle edition, revue et corrigée, FATA “We aa অর্থবেদ: হৃধ্যের আর চন্দ্রের গ্রহণ গণনার সহিত ১৪* বৎসরের : আরম্ভ ১৮৩৬ সাল অবধি সহর চন্দন নগর : এবং সমস্ত বাঙ্গাল! দেশের নিমিত্তে: করিয়াছেন জাকবছ ফ্রানছিক্ষান মারিয়। গেরেন : চন্দন নগরের সম্ধগ্রাহার পাদরী : দ্বিতীয়বার এবং শুদ্ধরূপে প্রীরামপুরে মুদ্রাঙ্কিত হইল |; সন ১৮৩৬ । 1618 iuteresting to note that Father Guérin himself was an assiduous student of Astronomy and published after his return to England a work on Indian Astronomy in 1847.
- For other specimens, see my paper in the Bargiya Sahitya
Parigat Patrika, (1323, vol. 23, p. 179), 10
