188 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY. [July, 18/3. Pulake bharaye gata, Abanata kari sira Lochane jharaye nira, Jadi ba puchhiye ban!, Ulati karaye pani, Kabiye tohari rite Ana na bnjhabi chite, Dhairaja nahika tay, Barn Chandi Dase gay. I. iv. 94. The confidante loquitur• That gay one who is the abode of virtue Incessantly murmurs thy name, On hearing a word of thee His limbs are pervaded by a thrill, Bending down lowly his head Tears pour from his eyes, If one should ask him a word He waves (him) away with his hand, If one should speak concerning thee Thou wilt see there is nothing else in his mind; There is no firmness (left) in him ; A serious matter Chandi Das sings. v H. ’ (The same.) E dhani, e dhani, bachana sun Nidan dekhiye amu pun ; Dekhite dekhite barhala byadhi, Jata tata kari nahiye sudhi, Na bandhe chikur na pare chir, Na khay ahar na piye nlr. Sonaka baran holla syam, Sofiari sonari tohari nam ; Na chihne manukh nimikh nai, Kather putali raliiyachhe chai. Tula khani dila nasika majhe, Tabe se bujhinu swasa achhe. Achhaye swasa na rahe jib, Bilamba na kara amar dib ! Chandi Dasa kahe biraha bitdha, Kebal marame okliadha Radha. Ah lady ! ah lady ! hear a word, At length having seen (him) I have come again; Looking, looking, (my) pain increased, Whatever was done profited not. He binds not his hair, he girds not his waist, He eats not food, he drinks not water. The colour of gold &yam has become, Constantly remembering thy name. He does not recognize any one, his eye does not wink, He remains with fixed look like a doll of wood. I placed a piece of wool to his nose, Then only I perceived that he breathed. There is breath, but there remains no life, Delay not, my happiness depends on it! Chandi DAs saith (it is) the anguish of separation In his heart, the only medicine is Radha. I. iv. 98. Jn this second example a ruthless moderniza¬ tion has taken place. The modern editor, igno¬ rant of the older language, has substituted the forms in present use for those which he did not understand. Thus in the seventh fine he had written sondr, which spoils the tune; it is necessary to read sonaka, which is almost cer¬ tainly what Chandi DAs really wrote, as a play upon the name syam, “ black,” and meaning that Krishna, though naturally black, had turned yellow from grief. So also in the line “ Kather putali rahiyachhe chai” the singer can only bring the tune out rightly by singing the modern word rahiydchhe as rehese or rahisi, which is a very recent vulgarism of the Bengali of to-day. There can be no doubt that we ought to restore the line thus : “ Kathaka putali rahila chayi.” In the next line the sense demands that dila, which, if anything, is a third person singular preterite, should be rejected for dinu, the old first person, as shown by bujhinu in the next line. The letters l and n are not distinguished in ordinary Ben¬ gali manscripts, and the error thus arose. There are several very singular and strictly old Bengali forms in this song, the presence of which is quite incompatible with the modernized forms which the editor has given to some of the verbs. Thus sofiari would not easily be known, without so me explanation, as from the Sanskrit ‘ smarana,’ remembrance. The Bengalis are unable to pro¬ nounce compound consonants like sm; they utter the 8 with a good deal of stress, leaving the m to make itself heard only as a slightly labial breath; the nasal portion of the m has here fixed itself, oddly enough, as a guttural, probably owing to the guttural n following. The Sans¬ krit verb smr has been made to furnish a parti¬ ciple, swan, which by the operation of the above process has become sofiari. Precisely parallel is the transition of bhramara, ‘ bee,’ into bhafiar. Another old word is okhud, Sanskrit aushadha, ‘ medicine,’ in which the Hindi cus- %
