( lix. ) Puja of the God, the up-keep of the large establishment, the due observance of the various festivals throughout the year and the annakote when many, many thousands of people, mostly women, belonging to even respectable families, crowd the temple and the approaches to it for partaking of the bhog and present a sight unique in Calcutta,-would be considered a fortune by many titled members of the aristocracy. It is to this family that Babu Vihari Lala belongs and he is justly regarded as the head of it. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, babu Vihari Lala has not spent his life in the usual role of luxury practised by the leisured olasses in this country. Of a literary turn of mind he has not only enriched the Bengali literature by several works of essays and metaphysics which replete with wit and sleeping humour, give evidence of his deep and keen insight into human nature and into society as it exists in Bengal to-day. They also, prove his mastery not only over the language but over historical and philosophical details which do honour to his scholarly habits. But above all, his stupendous works has been the translation and distribution of Joga Vashasta, one of the monumental works of Hindu philosophy, which at once show the height and depth of the vast learning of the Hindu Saints of old. The cost incurred by Babu Vehari Lala in this gigantic work would have dissuaded a less ardent votary of the letters, a less orthodox Hindu, and a less largerhearted citizen. If not for anything else it is for this grand enterprise that his name is 15
