ԳS ծ दछडाव 8 नाश्ऊि1 English, the spirit in which you write is to me so true an Indian spirit, that it shines through our own idiom, and carries me, I said before, straight to the banks of your Sacred rivers, to the bathing tanks and white shrines and temples of your Well-remembered villages and tanks. So once more sel you my thanks for the magic carpet you sent ine, upon which my soul can return to your dear land. May the songs of which you write remain to fill this land with their fragrance; you will have use of rhem, in the years before ytt, as we have need of all that is best in the songs of our own sects in the larl waters through which we arc steering.' The Vaisnava Literature of Mediaeval Bengal. By Rai Sahib )ine. chandra Sen. (The Calcutta University.) “Though the generalisation that all II indus not belonging to mullern reform in veill nts are Saivas or Vaisnavas is much to) wide, there are the two main divisions in the bcwillering mass of sects which make up the 27,OOOOO of Hindus, and at many points they ovarlap each other. The attempts made in the 19OI Census to Collect information regarding sccts led to such unsatis factory and partial results that they were not repeated in the last decennial cnumcration. But it is unquestio mat ble that the Vaisnavas - thc Worshippe S of Krishna-are doininant in Bengal, owing to the great success of the eformed cult cstablished by Chaitanya, a contemporary of Martin Luther The doctrine of Bhakti or religious devotion, which he taught still flourish, in beingal and the four lectures of the Ruader to the University of (alcutta in 13engali here reproduced provide an instructive guide to its expression in the literature of the country during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, The first part of the book is devoted to the carly period of Vaisnava literature, dating from the cleventh century. The Rai Sahib is fillied with a most patriotic love of his nation and its literature, and has clone more that any contemporary countryman to widen our know lege of them. II is bulky volume recording the history of Bengill Language and Literature Irom the cailliest times to the middle of the ninc: teenth century is accepted by Orientalists as the most complete and authorital tive work on the subject. Chaitanya clearly taught, as these pages show, that the Krishna (f th Mahabharata, the great chieftain and ally of the Pandava brothers, was not the
