542 PURBABANGA GIKA Dinesbobandra Sen's notes on the dates, environments and circumstances Of the composing of these East Bengal ballads were indispensable to full appreciation of them as well as affording delightful reading for their own sake. Yet they served to convince me that such works of art in which art shines through an ut lack of affectation and through a tenacious hold on the natural ani the trueworks sung joyfully by the unlettered to give joy to the unlettered, are above questions of date, environment and circumstance. His Eaccellency Lord Hardinge of Penshurt in his Convocation Address, dated the 16th March, 1912, as Chancellor of the Calcutta University ' During the last four years also the University has from time to time appointed Readers on special subjects to foster investigations of important branches of learning amongst our advanced students. One of these Readers, Mr. Sen, has embodied his lectures on History of Bengali Ilanguage and Literature from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century in a volume of considerable merit, which he is about to supplement by another original contribution to the history of one of the important vernaeulars in this country. May I express the hope that this example will be followed elsewhere, and that critical schools may be established for the vernacular languages of India which have not as yet received the attention they deserve?' His Eaccellency Lord Carmichael, Governor of Bengal. in his address on the occasion of his laying the Foundation Stone of the Rameshchandra Saraswat Bhawan, dated the 20th November, 1916 "For long Frameshchandra Dutt's History of the literature of Bengal was the only work of its kind available to the general reader. The results of further study, in this field, have been made available to us by the publication of the learned and luminous lectures of Rai Sahib Dineshchandra Sen. In the direction of the History of the language and literature Rai Sahib Dineshchandra Sen las created the uecessary interest by his Typical Selections. It remains for the Inenbers of the Parishad to follow this lead and to carry on the work in the same spirit of patient accurate research.' His Eaccellency Lord Ronalds haly, Government House, Calcutta 25th June, 1924 'I need hardly say that I have read, "Chaitanya and his Age' with the utmost pleasure. It seems to me to give a vivid account of the time when there was a great flowering of the emotional temperament of Bengal due in large neasure no doubt to a reaction against the frigid intellectualism of the monistic school of Vedanta Philosophers or as you call them Pantheists. Your Chapter on Sahaia is extremely interesting and recalled with great vividness the talk which we had at Barrackpur on that subject. But until I read your recent volume, I had not realised that there were so many sects of Sahajias or that the cult was so widespread. The Bengali language in its present form is a thing of recent growth. It has been fashioned gradually during the past one hundred years. Less than a century ago the Committee of Public Instruction with Macau! ay at its head declared that the Vernacular language contained neither the literary nor the scientific information necessary for a liberal education. Nor was this all. For not only was the Bengali language of that day considered to be inadequatego the needs of the times but it was also looked down upon by cultured Bengalis themselves, and it is on record that a suggestion made by an Englishman, Mr. Adam, that some at least of the lec" tures to be delivered in the educational institutions which were then being establish
