34 
MAITHIL CHRISTOMATHY. 
[Extra No. 
68. In the districts of Patna and Bhatsare, in Pargana Mahsaur, 
there lived a good man, into whose house the goddess of prosperity had 
come in haste. 
69. Dwarika Prasad by name, virtuous and wise. Pie was special 
Tahsildar for the Court of Wards, and knew the whole world. 
70. Deputy Collector Babu Isri Prasad came to Madhubani, and he 
went into every petty village, and gave orders to the relief superintendents. 
71. People borrowed maunds of grain and were pleased at heart, 
and many took alms. Bless the noble Englishmen, for every one’s limb 
became fat. 
72. The poor, the rich, and the wretched alike cried : “ Victory to the 
Company and the Brahmans blessed her, and they prayed to the Lord 
of Raghu (God) that her reign might increase on the throne for a hundred 
thousand years. 
73. Phatur Lai has told this tale of the famine. The Government, 
and the noble Governor, preserved Tirhut. 
We now come to the Poems of Vidyapati Thakur. The name of this 
celebrated poet is a household word throughout the whole of Bihar and 
Bangal. I had intended at first to prefix to the following collection of his 
songs, a succinct account of him and of his times,but space forbids me. Suffice 
it to say that he was born at Bisphi # in the Madhubani Sub-Division of the 
Darbhanga District, not far from Damodarpur, the birth-place of the still 
more celebrated Kalidasa, in the latter half of the fourteenth century. He 
was the first of the old Vaishnava master-singers who spoke and wrote in the 
language of the people ; and his short hymns of prayer and praise, soon 
became exceedingly popular. They became great favourites- of the more 
modern Vaishnava reformer of Bangal,—Chaitanya, and through him, 
songs purporting to be by Bidyapati have become as well known in 
Ban gall households as the Bible is in an English one. And now a curious 
circumstance arose,—unparalleled I believe in the history of literature. 
To a Bangali, Bidyapati wrote in a difficult and strange, though cognate 
language, and his words were hard “ to be understanded of the people” : 
so at first a few of his hymns were twisted and contorted, lengthened out 
and curtailed, in the procrustean bed of the Bangali language and metre, 
into a kind of bastard language neither Bangali nor Maithili. But 
this was not all,—a host of imitators sprung up,—notably one Basant 
Ray of Jessore, who wrote, under the name of Bidyapati, in this bastard 
language, songs which in their form bore a considerable resemblance to the 
* Not Bipasf as stated by other writers,—at least the village is not called Bipasi 
now-a-days. 
