Foreword.
The following anthology has its greatest interest in being a self-recording evidence of the earliest response that Bengal gave to the touch of the West. I think we can safely assert that she is the only country in the Orient which has shown any distinct indication of being thrilled by the voice of Europe as it came to her through literature. We are not concerned with a critical estimate of Bengal's earliest literary adventures in the perilous fields of a foreign tongue. But the important fact is this, that while there are other eastern countries captivated by the sight of the immense power and prosperity which Europe presented to us, Bengal has been stirred by the force of new ideas breaking upon her from the western horizon. One of its earliest effects upon our students was to rouse them into an aggressive antagonism against all orthodox conventions, irrespective of their merits. It was a sudden self-assertion of life after its repression for ages. This shock, which roused Bengal, mainly came through literature, and a great part of her energy followed the same channel of literature for its expression.
The most memorable instance of the working of ideas in Bengal in the time of her early contact of mind with Europe, has been Rammohan Roy's message of life to India,—a life centering in the spiritual idea of the all-pervading oneness of God, as inculcated in the Upanishads, and comprehending in its circumference all varieties of human activities from the moral down to the political. It was a call to move and fully to live, not from a blind love of movement, but as directed by an inner guidance coming from the heart of India's own wisdom.
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