My object in this work has been to give, from a literary point of view, but with a background of social and political history, and from a direct reading of the literature itself, an account of the important period in which, indeed, the obscure origins of modern Bengali literature are to be sought. The volume must not be regarded, however, as a mere store-house of facts; and although presented as an essay of literary and biographical criticism, it may be taken as an historical review of the course of Bengali literature from its decadence after Bharatchandra's death to its rejuvenation under the British rule.
The large number of quotations from various works scattered throughout the volume, no doubt, swells its length, but I could not always control the length of the illustrative extracts; for each quotation, in order to be illustrative, must be presented as complete in itself. The comparative scarcity of the books from which these passages are taken will, it is hoped, be an ample apology for their length and frequency.
The international method agreed upon by orientalists for transliteration of Sanskrit words has been followed here for Bengali words, with the only exception of using ch for c (5). In some cases where the name of a place or a person has got a standardised spelling (as in Chinsurah, Hooghly, Burdwan) I have retained it. I have not distinguished between va and ba (except in Sanskrit words sometimes), for the distinction is hardly recognised in Bengali either in spelling or pronunciation. The final a is generally dropped, as it is passed over generally in pronunciation. We write নীলদর্পণ (Niladarpaņa) but we read it as নীলদর্পণ (Nildarpan).
The second edition has been revised and considerably rewritten, and the history is brought down to 1857 A.D.
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