PREFACE. 
Mukunda Ram Cakravartt , 1 some extracts from whose poems I wish 
to introduce to the English reader, lived in Bengal during the latter 
half of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth century. 
He seems to have passed his life in the districts of Bardwan and 
Midnapur, and he commemorates in his works Mansihh, the celebrated 
general of the Emperor Akbar, who became governor of the newly 
conquered provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa in 1590. But 
his poems tell us as little of the wars and conquests which fill the 
history of Akbar’s reign, and which naturally engrossed the thoughts 
of the poet’s contemporaries, as Spenser’s “ Faery Queen ” tells us of 
the actual events which stirred men’s hearts during the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth. Mukunda Ram’s characters, in fact, live in a mytho¬ 
logical world as far removed from the actual world of human life 
as those in Ovid’s “ Metamorphoses ” ; and the Goddess Candl 
continually appears upon the scene to help her votaries and confound 
their enemies, as if they were living in the earliest mythological 
ages. But all this is only the external form of the poem. Under 
this fanciful surface we come in contact with a solid reality; for 
there we may find a picture of Bengali village life as it actually 
existed in the sixteenth century, before any European influences 
had begun to affect the national character or widen its intellectual 
or moral horizon ; and it is this vivid realism which gives such 
a permanent value to the descriptions. Our author is the Crabbe 
1 He is often called by the title leabi-lcankan, “ the ornament of poets.” 
