পাতা:মাইকেল মধুসূদন দত্তের জীবন-চরিত - যোগীন্দ্রনাথ বসু.pdf/৩৫৬

to 8 জীবন-চরিত। Perhaps you do not know how I am situated here. Let me tell you that if I were not truly 'smit with the love of sacred song,' I should throw poetry to the ku r native land, would much assist him. The subject is also such as to enable the poet to allude to a good number of Sanskrit and Bengalee poets-to Valmiki, Sriharsa, Kabikankan and Bharata Chandra. He may introduce the gods and goddesses as taking a part in the events of the poem. He may represent Krishna (for it appears from the name of one of the princes that they were Vaishanavas) appearing in a vision to Vijaya, exhorting him to proceed on a distant exploratory voyage and promising him the crown of a beautiful country, and Varuna, offended at an impious act on the part of the future conqueror of Ceylon, and therefore, raising a storii and casting his wife in wrath on a distant shore, Like the Lusiad of Camoens the 'Singhala Vijaya" would bea patriotic poem in the strictest sense of the word. In the short account of Vijay's adventures given above, I have altered as well as invented an incident or two in order to adapt the story for poetical composition. Vijaya was not a virtuous though a heroic prince, but the poet, like another Valmiki should pass over his faults or depict them in the softest manner possible. Poetry is different from history ; I have reasons to suspect that Rama was not the persoification of virtue nor Ravana the incarnation of wickedness, as Valmiki has represented them to be. The story of Vijaya, as yourself and Madhu are well aware, is in the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 59th chapters of the Mahavansa. Had it not been for the Singhalese historian, we would have ręmained ignorant of this most precious proof of the existence of military powers, naval skill, and a spirit of adventure in our nation in ancient times. The Bengalee conquerors left a permanent imprer sion upon the island as a proof of which it may be stated that there is an affinity between the Ceylonese and Bengali dialects even in words not of Sanskrit origin, greater than between Bengali and the dialect of a country nearer to Bengal than Ceylon that is