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in 1573:that Ahmedahad was conqueted by the great Emperor Akbar. Peace however does not seem to have een established among. the people until the close -of the century; and as soon as there was peace and quiet in the country, poets appeared on the horizon. The great and long blank'in poetry till then is thus explained by the disturbed state of the country, and yet may it not be that Champaner, which is not without its poetic associations, had a poetry which is lost to us with the town ? . The-:three great poets who dawn upon our horizon with piece and quiet in seventeenth century, are Pre- manand, Samal and Akho. Each worked on-his own original plan, each supplemented the work of the other, -and each excelled in his own great work. - We are agree- ably surprised to find that in this new epoch religion and’ Bhakti no longer:appropriate. the. whole field of poetry. But poetry now for the first time in the province grows up upon its own independent foundations, and itself ‘emancipated and free, begins its own work towards the emancipation, enlargement and ennoblement of the minds
- and aspirations of men. Thisis said, not with a view to
cast any aspersion against religion, ‘but to dispel the local superstition which has for centuries made poetry the handmaid of religion as if it were not entitled to be its own mistress. It is as gaining us no small point in this direction that the works of these admittedly great and
