পাতা:Vanga Sahitya Parichaya Part 1.djvu/৪৪

36 INTIRODUCTION. love for village-life, subject to all the spiritualizing influences of the Brahmanic and Buddhist religions. They were keenly alive to the sanctity of home-life, and the canons of morality laid down by Dāk and Khanā for the conduct of women attest to the people's full appreciation of purity in domestic life. The Bengal peasants do not possess the courage of more enterprising races or of the nomadic tribes. If they have to leave home even temporarily, they will seek the astrologer's aid to ascertain if their journey will be an auspicious one. Thus in the rustic literature of the 10th century astrology plays a prominent part. The people anxious for the safety of their little homes, which were exposed to frequent incursions of foreigners, took to reading their fortune and propitiating the evil planets. A list of bad omens for a journey will be found on pp. 119, 120, 257, and 795. But people in high position often attached but little credit to the astrologer's prognostications. We find in the poem of Chandi, Dhanapati the merchant insulting the astrologer who had the courage to say that the day fixed by the merchant far going on a sea-voyage was not auspicious. The astronomical calculations were wonderfully precise, and it is curious that even the village-folk of the 10th century knew the secret of a lunar eclipse by such simple calculations as:-"If the moon occupies the seventh place from the sign of the Zodiac appropriate to the month, and if there be a full man that day, it is certain there will be a lunar eclipse” (p. 12). In the Shivayana by Rāmeshwara quoted on (pp. 130-137) the mode of agricultural operations and the preventives used against insects are graphically described. The names of various kinds of grass given there are now mostly unknown to us. For the right identification of them we must seek the help of the rustic people of the locality where the poet was born. On pp. 116, 117, 136, and 137, various classes of rice have been enumerated. The descriptions of the finer ones among them remind us of the loving care with which they were grown. The names of rice are often poetic, and suggest the purpose for which they were used. Such for instance are the “DurgāBhoga’—the meal of the goddess Durgā-the ‘Wägar, I wan’—the nourisher of young heroes, the ‘Mou-Kalasa’—the cup of honey, the ‘KumāraBhoga’—the prince's meal, the ‘Mahāpāla'—the nourisher of the earth, and the ‘Kanaka-Chuda’—the gold-crested. The names of trees with which our forests abound will be found on pp. 212, 213, 214, 574, 623 and the names of the birds that gaily fly in the sky of Bengal on pp. 86 and 321. Some of the writers have urged that the orange was imported from China to India in comparatively recent times, but this does not appear true from the description of the orange on p. 1301. The names of flowers are given on page 209 and of various indigenous spices on 245. In fact, throughout this old literature of ours the rustic element appears again and again,