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Nov. 1, 1872.]
EARLY BENGALI KIRTANS.
KÍRTANS, OR HYMNS FROM THE EARLIEST BENGALI POETS. BY JOHN BEAMES, B.C.S., &c. &c.
ARIAL interest nota hay before the public manasiga pha bimochana lochana,
hymns which I now
phânda:
for the first time. Not only do they represent a large and widely popular class of compositions hitherto almost unknown to European scholars, but they are at the same time absolutely the earliest known specimens of Bengali literature, and thus present to the philologist a means of solving many very obscure and difficult problems, while to the student of Indian philosophy they exhibit to the fullest extent the natural and unrestrained sentiments of a follower of the Vaishnava creed in its first and purest stage.
These hymns are still sung in every village in Bengal. I believe there are some thousands of them living on the lips and in the hearts of the peasantry which have never been reduced to writing. Collections have been made, and I believe a few have been published in Bengali, but not in such a way as to be generally accessible to English readers. From their internal structure and from historical considerations they may be ascribed to the end of the fourteenth, and beginning of the fifteenth century, and are therefore genuine representatives of the speech of Bengal five hundred years ago.
I.
Rag Sindhura madhur-tåla. Anjana ganjana, jagajjana ranjana, meghapunja jini baranâ: Tarunârupa,† sthalakamala dalâruņa, manjira ranjita charanâ: Dekha sakhi nagara râja birajet: Sudhaï sudhamaya hâsa bikasita, chânda malina bhel§ lâje:
Jini-having conquered, an old form of the aorist ticiple.
par
tdruna has two meanings. In the first place it means "the dawn," in the second "red."
birdie. This form of the simple indefinite present is common to all the languages of the Aryan group, though its meaning as a present is somewhat obscured by modern usage in Marathi and Hindi; the older form is in -at as in sudal, sthiral, and is contracted from the Sanskr. ending -ați. In the forms laje, pás'e, chite, we have the old oblique case of the noun which expresses both instrumentality and location, in the poems of the medieval period of all the seven. languages this form occurs though in the modern development of each of them it has met with a different fate.
Bhel is still used in the Bhojpuri dialect of Hindi, but is no longer current in Bengali, which uses instead the more modern form hotl,-(hotlam, hotle, &c).
niting==nityam. The anuswara written as -ng. Taichhana Hindi, aisa; Bhojpuri, aisan: (from Skr. through Prakrit).
Bhânga bhujaga pâśe bândhana, kulabatî kul debati mana kânda: Anukula dolata bhramara karambita, keli kadamba mâla:
Gobinda Dâsa chite niting sthiraï, aichhana murati rasâla.
Translation.
323
Radha loquitur;
Surpassing collyrium (in blackness) delighter of human kind,
Conquering in hue the cloud-masses: Tender as the dawn, redder than the nelumbium, His feet adorned with manjîra : See, dear friend, shines the king of youths:
(His face) expanded with nectared smiles is fair (so that) the moon has become dim from shame : Annihilating the pride of the lotus with his eyes, Love's snare :
Binding with his eyebrow's snake-like noose, The race of women, distress of goddesses: Made musical by bees hangs the beautiful
Garland of keli and kadamba flowers: In the heart of Gobind Das is ever firmly fixed that gracious form.
The lines being very long I have divided each one into two, with the exception of the third, which is a sort of chorus, and shorter than the rest. The whole piece thus consists of eight lines. The end of each line is marked by a colon (:).
II. Lalit Ragini. Sun, Sun! Mâdhaba, nirdaya deha! Dhik rahu aichhan tohari sineha!
This poem contains more grammatical forms than the preceding one; and those who are acquainted with the Bengali of the present day will see how little these forms have as yet acquired of the distinctive characteristics of that language. Thus
aleft of thee,' Bengali, ; Bhojpuri Hindi, J; Old Hindi (Chand) तुहि, तोहि also तेरो ; Marwari धारा, Panjabi, तुहादा; Gujarati, तारो ; &c.
It would seem that Tohari is almost as closely allied to any one of these forms as to the modern Bengali.
"may it remain! be it!" The termination accords with Oriya in del, já, but not particularly with Bengali. It resembles more the T, of old Hindi. It is in fact Sanskrit 8. Sing. imperat: which becomes in Prakrit mahati, and the hiatus is in Hindi filled up by, while in our text the a is dropped. Whence the Bengali gets its final k in houk, rakuk, I do not yet know.
