XXII 
INTRODUCTION. 
in the general loss of authority coincident with the cessation of Mughal 
supremacy. Bards there were few, and, as these could only sing of 
bloodshed and treachery, they preferred to remain silent. In other 
branches of literature there was a similar decay. No original authors of 
the first rank appeared, and the only great names we meet are those of 
commentators on the works of the preceding two centuries, and of men 
who further developed the critical laws founded by Kesab Das. Of the 
last, the best known were Uday Nath TribedI and Jas’want Siggh, the 
authors of the Ras-chandroday and of the Bhdkhd Bhukhan respect¬ 
ively. Similarly there appeared a number of anthologies, such as the 
Sat-kabi-gira Bilds of Bal Deb, the Kabya Nir’nay of Bhikharl Das, 
and others. The end of the century is redeemed from barrenness by 
the Prem Ratna, the work of one of the few poetesses of India—Bibi 
Ratan Kfiar. 
The first half of the 19th century, commencing with the down¬ 
fall of the Maratha power and ending with the Mutiny, forms 
another well-marked epoch. It was the period of renascence after the 
literary dearth of the previous century. The printing-press now for 
the first time found its practical introduction into Northern India, 
and, led by the spirit of Tubs! Das, literature of a healthy kind 
rapidly spread over the land. It was the period of the birth of the 
Hindi language, invented by the English, and first used as a vehicle 
of literary prose composition in 1803, under Gilchrist’s tuition, by 
Lallu Ji Lai, the author of the Prem Sdgar. It was also a period 
of transition from the old to the new. The printing-press had not 
yet penetrated to Central India, and there the old state of affairs 
continued. Poets, of whom Padmakar Bhatt was the most famous, 
not unworthily wore the mantle which had descended from Kesab 
Das and Chintamani Tripathl, while Bikram Sahi wrote an ingenious 
Sat Sai in imitation of the more famous one of Bihari Lai. 
In Banaras, on the contrary, the art of printing gave a new 
audience to the learned; and to supply the demand thus created, 
several works of the first importance appeared. The chief of these 
was the translation of the Mahabharata into Hindi by Gokul Nath. 
Critical writers of a new school also came to the front, of whom the 
best, longo intervallo, was Harishchandr’, the author of the Sundari 
Tilak and many other excellent works; while in Raja S'iva Prasad 
the cause of education received an enlightened friend, and a pioneer 
in that most difficult work, the writing of good school-books. Lallu 
Ji Lai, the author of the Prem Sugar , has already been mentioned; 
