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It has been claimed that the Paharpur temple
is a unique monument, the type of which has not been found
in India, but the style of which was imitated in southeast
Asia. It is equally true that in architecture, and for that
matter, in sculpture and painting as well, the achievement
of Bengal was rather limited. Patrons adhered, more or less,
to convention. The canon of art, laid down in texts produced
in north India, would not allow the artisans, who were members
of professional guilds, to make any serious deviation. The
world of the artist was essentially agricultural and rural,
rather narrow, and one in which his place was predetermined.
Living as he did in a hut made of bamboo, reeds, and mud,
he was more at home with simple tools and easily available
materials. This is amply demonstrated by the unique terracotta
art of Paharpur. Nowhere in the religious art of India could
be seen "such a large social content, such variety of
human feelings, such intensity of contact with the events
and experiences of daily life, such spontaneous actions and
movements, depicted with such powerful effect and purposeful
rhythm." 3
More important was the beginning, in this
period, of the Bengali language, literature and script. The
assertion of the language of the people in an atmosphere where
Sanskrit was favored by the court and held generally in high
esteem because of its association with Brahminical doctrines
was, by itself, a matter of great social significance. The
earliest specimens of Bengali literature were Buddhist mystic
song's composed by leaders of the Sahajayana cult. In putting
across their religious message they made use of the daily
experience of an average man. Not only were the words of the
songs Bengali, but the music of some of these at least seem
to have been peculiar to contemporary Bengal.
The Bengali language received the patronage
of the independent sultans who ruled Bengal between the Turkish
conquest in the beginning of the thirteenth century and the
Mughal conquest at the end of the sixteenth. Although under
their rule Persian replaced Sanskrit as the court language,
it did not play the same role as Sanskrit had done previously.
The new rulers, doubtlessly led by political considerations
to come in close contact with the people, took an active interest
in the Bengali translations of such Sanskrit works as the
Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagauata Purana, and amply
rewarded the translators, who were chastised for this very
act of heresy by the Brahmins. The example of the rulers was
later emulated by small independent courts on the periphery,
such as those of Arakan, Cochbehar, and Tripura. Thus the
cultivation of Persian was confined to Muslim courts, that
of Sanskrit, bereft of court patronage, became limited to
urban areas like Navadwip, Sylhet, and Vikrampur, while that
of Bengali became widespread.
The economic scene, however, did not undergo
any major structural change. The permanent dependence of socio-economic
groups on hereditary occupations continued; agriculture remained
the backbone of the economy, and rural settlements far outnumbered
the urban ones. In rural areas the cultivators, weavers, carpenters,
blacksmiths, and potters depended on each other for products
and services, and the village market provided some scope for
exchange of cowries, while administration, trade and commerce
were the main occupations of the townsmen. Maritime commerce
flourished once more, as did the textile industry - Bengal
silk was much in demand, the slave trade became profitable,
and there was an influx of silver coins - sometimes gold as
well - in the urban areas. In all these, one visualizes a
three-tier social organization, the top of which was occupied
by the high officials and landlords, the bottom by the producing
class – the cultivator, the weaver, and the manual laborer,
- and the middle by the traders and the merchants, the priests
and the teachers, most of whom depended on the ruling classes
for their own welfare.
The onset of Mughal rule brought Bengal under
the control of a distant central administration. Even when
that control weakened in the eighteenth century, the colonial
character of the Mughal rule did not wither. The peasantry
was subjected to further impoverishment, and it is in this
period that we hear of famines and mass exodus in the face
of extortion by rent-collectors. Due to the growth of European
trade, a considerable amount of money was put into the economy,
but an additional drain on the economy was also created in
the form of tributes to the central authority. The foreign
traders and the Mughal courts, far and near, created a new
market that resulted in the further growth of the ship-building
and textile industries and the development of small-scale
ivory work and filigree and repousse work in silver. Much
of this industry, however, was dependent on monetary advances
given by merchant money-lenders through intermediaries. A
banking and mercantile class composed of men of north Indian
origin grew to the exclusion of local entrepreneurs.
The urban culture that developed, centering
round the Mughal court, also had the character of an exogenous
one. Under the Mughals, Bengali literature was deprived of
the kind of royal patronage it had received hitherto. The
new writings in the seventeenth century thus appear in Arakan,
and in the eighteenth in Nadiya, where the courts had extended
support to poets.
One of the consequences of Muslim rule was
the large-scale conversion of Buddhists and low-caste Hindus
to Islam. To these people, Islam was not only an egalitarian
ideal, but also a new prospect of material gain. However,
it was soon found that the Muslim society had also been influenced
by the caste system: the Muslims of foreign descent were ranked
higher, and the indigenous ones were placed low in society.
Islam appeared in Bengal not in its orthodox
form, but in the mystic one preached by the Sufis. Sufi teachings,
again, were mixed with indigenous tradition of Yoga, which
explains the existence of a continuous stream of Sufi-Yoga
syncretism throughout the Muslim rule. The local converts
to Islam, again, often clung to their older beliefs and practices;
they continued to worship some of the old Hindu folk deities,
such as the goddesses of pox and cholera, and created Muslim
counterparts of Hindu local deities in the lady of the forest,
the patron-saint of the tigers, or the saint presiding over
the water-ways. Sometimes both the Hindu and the Muslim venerated
the same deity, such as Satyanarayana, also known by his Muslim
name of Satyapir.
With the declining influence of Brahminism
following the establishment of Muslim rule, folk beliefs of
the masses received an impetus, and all kinds of local deities
and obscure cults rose to prominence. The orthodox Hindu ideas
had to come to terms with this new wave of popular myths and
beliefs and just as the Buddha was once proclaimed as the
incarnation of the god Visnu, so were the local deities accepted
as the poor relations of Puranic gods and goddesses. Simultaneously,
as a reaction to this amalgam and to the Hindu contact with
the Muslims for the Brahmins and Kayasthas were taking up
administrative positions under the Muslim rulers - there was
a tightening up of the archaic socio-religious legal system.
This is represented by the enforcement of kulinism, the practice
of mela order, and the development of the new smrti writings.
Smrrti laws demanded a complete patternization of conduct
of all sections of people, and denied any freedom of thought
and action. Such rigid formulas could not help to identify
or solve problems that confronted society. It is no wonder,
therefore, that philosophy was divested of social moorings,
and became a matter only of hyper subtle intellectual arguments.
This explains the development of the Navyanyaya or the neo-logic
school in Bengal, which, it has been claimed, surpassed all
schools of Hindu logic in India.
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