পাতা:সাহিত্য পরিষৎ পত্রিকা (দ্বিতীয় ভাগ).pdf/২১৯

( 19 ) Age of Pericles and the Age of the Renaissance show the rich constructive and inventive fertility peculiar to epochs of expansion and movement ;--but here in India the intercrossing of civilizations, the unsettlement and movement of ideas, on a more gigantic scale than the world ever before witnessed, threaten to end in giving birth to mere half-breeds and half-castes of the intellectual world, with all the well-known moral and intellectual characteristics of mulattoes The curse has been in great part brought on by the circumstance that an organic assimilation of the new ideas and sentiments, of the new ways of a new civilization, has been rendered impossible for us by the fict of our neglecting the national and traditional medium of the vernacular speech and idiom in the growth and development of our new intellectual life. For speech is the body of thought,-the forms and idioms of language are the mould of our ideas and sentiments ;-and we do not assimilate these unless we successfully recast them in the mould of our native speech. Whenever the new ideals have been sought to be made genuinely our own through their representation and embodiment in the forms and modes of our native idiom, great results have been achieved-witness the prose of Bankimchandra and Rabindranath, and the poetry of Michael Madhusudan, Hemchandra and Rabindranath. The practical difficulties that may be urged against the proposal are :- (I) The want of suitable text-books in the vernacular for the University Examinations. So far as Bengali is concerned, the objection is flimsy. In the literary sphere proper, Bengali text-books are available for the B. A. and even for the M.A. Examination. For most other Indian vernaculars, text-books may, I believe, be appointed for the Entrance Examination. Where text-books for the F. A. are wanting the existing system may be maintained. (2) The want of uniformity consequent on the recognition of the vernacular for some candidates for the F.A. Examination, in addition to a classical language, and of a classical language only in the case of others. Here it may be urged in reply that for the great majority of candidates there will be one Sanskrit paper, and one Bengali paper, on the third day of the F. A. Examination. It is true that for a small number there will be two papers on a classical language ;-but the sacrifice of uniformity to this extent is nothing new in the Calcutta University, e.g. the afternoon paper on the first day of the Entrance Examination. At the same time the proposed arrangement for the F. A. Examination will be free from most of the practical difficulties attendant on the Entrance Translation paper. Of course, there is no pretence of uniformity in the higher examinations of the University, (3) The possible injury to the cause of Sanskrit education. It will be seen that I do not propose to touch the Sanskrit F. A. or En