Bengalis hitherto content with village-life. 846 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. I have said more than once in the foregoing chapters that the heart of Bengal lay in her. vil- lages,—contented as these were with their never- ceasing fountain of domestic and spiritual happi- ness. Our people did not hitherto care for the world outside the pale of their homes. They worked and sang, prayed, fasted and _ had visions of God. They heard the bird Kokil coo from the mango boughs in spring, and saw their favourite flower, the lotus, bloom in their tanks in autumn ; and blithely did they sing about all these, and
about the sweets of home life. They were content with loving their kith and kin, their mothers, wives and children, and thought that God re- vealed Himself to them in domestic tenderness. They pursued the nicities of Logic or indulged in abstruse metaphysical contemplations, and disci- plined their mind that they might take a quiet and ungrudging view of the iils of life and en- counter nobly the supreme penalty of nature when in due course it would come upon them. But this village life underwent a sudden distur- bance. Political changes were of little importance to the people. They heard from gossips that the Badsah, who ruled from the throne of Murshidabad, had been ousted by the English, and that a great battle had been fought at Plassey, but this did not seem at all any important news to them. Now, hewever, for the first time in history, a set of people came with the distinct object of improving them spiritually and morally. ‘be Mussalmans had not done so,—not even the great Akbar in his dream of a political empire. The Portuguese, the Burmese and the Maharattas had all overrun the country
