Western Influence in Indian Literature

In the history of Bengal the present century of the Christian era is invested with great importance indicating as it does a landmark in the growth and development of the country which has secured to it recognition and a place of honour in the world in art in literature and in the natural Sciences. [...] weal and woe of the people—their freedom in the choice of their mates the oppression of the poor by the rich the intense devotion of tha wife to the husband the sudden conversion of wicked men through contact with a person of saintly character. [...] While speaking of the Sanskritic influence on the literature of Bengal in the prBritish days it is but reasonable to point out that there is thus the possibility of a vast literature in the country almost entirely free from it and originat ing in the spontaneous impulse of natural born poets to sing in verse the remarkable occurrences of the locality in the environment in which they have been [...] Literature of the period mainly consisted in the courtly poetry breathed in the atmosphere of the Nabadwip Court and translated into writing by Bharatchandra though the lightness of his touch and some of his other excellence—his literary tricks as it were—shine in many of the lightsome briskly moving verses of the Kaviwallas who stretch even beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. [...] Too late alas came the combinations of the Muhammadans 1576-78 which failed and the increasing pressure of the English* and the Dutch from the sea and of the Emperors of Delhi from the north made the situation still more helplessly involved.