Historical Outline of the Languages of Western Indian

Author(s): K B Vyas
Publisher: Z_Vijay_Vallabh_suri_Smarak_Granth_012060.pdf

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ACARYA VIJAYAVALLABHASŪRI COMMEMORATION VOLUME
Taiṁ bāliu Kāma Tripura vidhvaṁsiu, pavanavegi jima tūla/
Padmanābha pūchai Somaiya Kethüm Karayauṁ trisüla//) "Dark Bhois were called for; and the pieces of Siva's linga were hauled up in the cart. Several pairs of bullocks were made to draw it; it was thus removed to Delhi.
"O Rudra, in the times of yore you consumed the demons in the fire of your wrath; you spread punya in the world and removed the terror which oppressed the gods.
"You burnt down Kāma and destroyed Tripura just as wind blows away cotton. Padmanābha (the poet) asks you, O Somanātha, where have you laid up your trisula now?"
The other outstanding poets of this period are Narsimha, the poetsaint, and Mirambãi the immortal poetess of Rajasthān, whose poetry is the cherished heritage of India; Bhālana, the celebrated scholar who set Kadambari to verse; and the great Jaina writers Lāvanyasamaya and Māņikyasundara Sūri. Of the latter writers Māņikyasundara Suri is celebrated for his remarkable prose classic Pệthvīcandracaritra, which is an ornament of the Old Gujarātī prose. It stands unique in the entire Old Gujarāti literature on account of its dignified and mellifluous prose-style and the remarkable beauty of its composition. Numerous specimens of Old Gujarati prose have come to light, but of the ornate literary prose used by scholars of the mediaeval times, Pệthvīcandracaritra is almost the solitary example.
VII From the 16th century A.D. Gujarati assumes almost its present linguistic form. This period is remarkable for its wealth of literature—the well-known Akhyānas of Premānanda, reflecting the contemporary Gujarāti life, the poetical romances of Sāmala, reminding us of the Kathasaritsāgara and the Arabian Nights, and the great philosophical poems of Akho, and the delicately melodious and almost etherial lyrics of Dayārām.
From the middle of the 19th century Gujarāti language and literature undergo a fateful change on account of the influence of the English language and literature. The prose now became, under the influence of English, more cultivated and complex in nature, capable of expressing involved thoughts. The prose style could now vary from the declamatory and the narrative to the reflective. In content, the literature, which was so far restricted only to religion and allied topics, now embraced every