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JULY, 1873.]
VAISHNAVA POETS OF BENGAL.
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ploce be got of all of which the value is not known; where these were good, if the inscrip- tion were worth publication, they would only require to be transferred and printed; where they were unsatisfactory, but the inscription of apparent interest, a trained hand could be sent to obtain a faithful facsimile by the process best suited to the circumstances of the case. It may
be safely asserted that, had the money spent on inscriptions during the last ten years been judiciously employed in this way, we should now have had a body of inscriptions equal in execution to any ever published, and considerably more numerous than the total of those on which so much has been almost uselessly spent.
THE EARLY VAISHNAVA POETS OF BENGAL.
II-CHANDI DÂS.
BY JOHN BEAMES, B.C.S., M.B.A.S., &c. Next in rank to Bidya pati comes Chan- be still standing in the village of Nadür, where di Das, who though older in age did not our poet was born and lived. The date of his begin to write so early as his brother-poet. He conversion to Vaishņavism is not known, but he was a Barendro Brahman, and was born in A.D. died in 1478, in the sixty-second year of his age. 1417 at Nadûr, a village near the Thana of His conversion and subsequent conduct appears Sakalipûr, in the present British District of to have made his native place too hot to hold Birbhum in Western Bengal, which lies about him, for he passed the latter years of his life at forty miles to the north west of the celebrated Châtera, a village far to the south in the present town of Nadiya (Nuddea). He was at first district of Bankura. After he became a a Śâuta or worshipper of the Sakti or female Vaishnava, he thought it necessary to provide procreative energy typired by the goddess Durga, himself with a Vaishnavi, and selucted for this wife of Siva, one of whose names, Chandi, purpose a woman named Rand, of the dhobi or the "enraged," he bears. The particular or washerman caste, a proceeding which must idol affected by this sect is termed Bå suli, have given grave offence to his orthodox kinand was probably a non-Aryan divinity adopt- dred, and is remarkable as showing that the obed by the Aryan colonies in Bengal. Her literation of the distinctions of caste, so characrade woodland temples are found still in the teristic of early Vaishņavism, had come into mountains and submontane jungles of Western existence before the times of Chaitanya, and Bengal, and all down the hill-ranges of Orissa, that he, like so many other popular reformers, and I have even met with them on the Suban- did not so much originate, as concentrate and rekha, and along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. elevate into doctrine, an idea which had long A fine Sanskřit name has been fitted to this been vaguely floating and gaining force in the wild forest divinity, and she is called by the minds of his countrymen, Brahmans Visâlâ kshi, or the "large-eyed." Chandi Dá s and his contemporary Bid. her statues represent her holding in her up- yâpati were acquainted with each other, and lifted arms two elephants, from whose trunks the Pada-kalpataru coritains some poems (2409water pours on to her head. In the rustic vil- 2415) descriptive of their meeting on the banks of lage shrines in her honour one sees masses of the Ganges and singing songs in praise of Radha small figures of elephants made of earth, baked and Krishna together. The style of the two poets by the village potters and offered by women;
| is very much alike, but there is perhaps more heaps of these little figures, all more or less sweetness and lilt in Bidyâ pati. Favourable spe. smashed and mutilated, surround the shrine, cimens of Chandi Dâs are the following :where stands a figure once perhaps distinguish. able as that of a human being, but so smeared
Krishna's Grief.* with oil and encrusted with repeated coatings Se je nagara gumadhâma of vermilion as to have lost all shape or recog. Japaye tohari nama, nizable details. One of these temples is said to Sunite tohâri bậta
* In the transliteration the guttural nasal is written 1, the palatal , the cerebral n, and the anuswäran. In old Bengali the two former are of frequent occurrence, representing respectively ng and ny. The ordinary dental n is not marked.
I.
