Bengali sculptors, Bengali, a mixed language, 828 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. shine. In Bengali ¢a)# is the commonest term to signify sun-shine, and except scholarly folk, no one knows that originally its meaning was fierce. The word 421s4#a has been restricted in Bengali to im- ply that particular festivity of the Vaishavas in which cooked food is indiscriminately distributed amongst the poor, who assemble there without in- vitation. The word literally means a great festi- vity, and in Sanskrit it is always used in that sense. Similarly the word সঙ্কীতন, 10101) 11 Sanskrit means reciting or singing, has been restricted in
Bengali to a particular kind of singing of God's name by a procession party of the Vaisnavas. We find frequent references to sculptural work done in Bengal on stone in which the artisans of Navadvipa excelled. Raja Jaya Narayana in his Kaci Khanda says that many orders of stone images for the temples at Benares were executed by Nadia artisans. In the Bhakti Ratnakara we find the name of one renowned sculptor to be Nayana Bhaskara, a resident of Halisahar in Twenty-four Parganas.
lll. Early Prose Literature. A people who had lost their political supremacy, and had no voice in the administration of their own country,—who had retired to quiet village-life and pastoral occupations, and had scarcely any occa- sion to commune with the rest of the world,—what need had they for cultivating prose? Outside their quiet homes they came to towns only for trade or to transact litigation in courts, and had to deal with a heterogenous people who would not recognise pure Bengali as a medium of communication. In
