পৃষ্ঠা:কথা-গীতা.djvu/৭

এই পৃষ্ঠাটোৰ বৈধকৰণ হৈছে
A FEW OPINIONS ON
KATHA GITA.

Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray says :-

 "Indeed the prose Gita of Bhatta Deva composed in the sixteenth century is unique of its kind. I had an opportunity of coming across an excellent edition of this book, which we owe to the patriotism and scholar- ship of Pandit Hemchandra Goswami. It is a priceless treasure. Assamese prose literature developed to a stage in the far distant sixteenth century, which no other literature of the world reached except the writings of Hooker and Latimer in England. There has been a controversy for long about the independance and identity of the Assamese language. This is extremely foolish. This is due I hold to the provincial patriotism and the national conceit of the Bengalees living in Assam. The Katha Gita shows clearly that the Assamese literature developed to a standard in the Sixteenth Century which the Bengali literature had reached only in the time of Iswar Chandra and Bankim Chandra. In fact if some Assamese scholars now get up and say that it is the Bengalee who has borrowed his prose from Assamese Literature and enriched his own, it will be very difficult to dislodge him. I think the question may now be considered as solved and