( 14 ) and it needed a means of expression capable of change and expansion. He has been blamed also for replacing the high literary Bengali of the Pundits by a mixed popular tongue which was neither the learned language nor good vernacular. But the Bengali of the Pundits would have crushed the growing richness, variety and versatility of the Bengali genius under its stiff inflexible ponderousness. We needed a tongue for other purposes than dignified treatises and erudite lucubrations. We needed a language which should combine the strength, dignity or soft beauty of Sanskrit with the verve and vigour of the vernacular, capable at one end of the utmost vernacular raciness, and at the other of the most sonorous gravity. Bankim divined our need and was inspired to meet it, he gave us a means hy which the soul of Bengal could express itself to itself. As he had divined the linguistic need of his country's future. so he divined also its political need. He, first of our great publicists, understood the hollowness and inutility of the political agitation which prevailed in his time and exposed it with merciless satire in his “Lokarahasya” and “Kamala Kanter Dafter.” But he was not satisfied merely with destructive criticism, he had a positive vision of what was needed for the salvation of the country. He saw that the force from above must be met by a mightier reacting force from below. He bade us leave the canine method of agitation for the leonine. The Mother of his vision held trenchant steel in her twice seventy million hands and not the bowl of the mendicant. It was the stern gospal of force which he preached under a veil and in images in “Anandamath” and “Devi Chaudhurani.” And he had an inspired unerring vision of the moral strength which must be at the back of the physical force. He perceived that the first element of moral strength must be Tyaga, complete self-sacrifice for the country and complete self-devotion to the
