THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

II. 5. Bankim Chandra Chatterji91Bankim's first attempt of any importance was begun at Khulna,and finished at Baruipur, the birth-place of some of his finestwork. It was the Durgesh Nandini, a name ever memorable asthe first-born child of the New Prose. At Baruipur he wrote alsoKapala Kundala and Mrinalini and worked at the famous Poison-Tree.At Berhampur, his next station, he began editing theBangadarshan, a magazine which made a profound impressionand gave birth to that increasing periodical literature of today, ofwhich Bharati, the literary organ of the cultured Tagore family,is the most finished type. Since then Bankim has given us somevery ripe and exquisite work, Chandrashekhar, Krishna Kanta'sWill, Debi Chaudhurani, Anandamath, Sitaram, Indira andKamala Kanta. Dating from his magistracy at Berhampur brokenhealth and increasing weakness attended the great novelistto his pyre; but the strong unwearied intellect struggled with andtriumphed over the infirmities of the body. His last years wereyears of suffering and pain, but they were also years of considerablefruitfulness and almost unceasing labour. He had been asensuous youth and a joyous man. Gifted supremely with theartist's sense for the warmth and beauty of life, he had turnedwith a smile from the savage austerities of the ascetic and witha shudder from the dreary creed of the Puritan. But now in thatvalley of the shadow of death his soul longed for the sustainingair of religion. More and more the philosophic bias madeits way into his later novels, until at last the thinker in himproved too strong for the artist. Amid his worst bodily sufferingshe was poring over the Bhagavadgita and the Vedas, strivingto catch the deeper and sacred sense of those profoundwritings. To give that to his countrymen was the strenuous aimof his dying efforts. A Life of Krishna, a book on the Essenceof Religion, a rendering of the Bhagavadgita and a version ofthe Vedas formed the staple of his literary prospects in his passageto the pyre. The first two realised themselves and the Bhagavadgitawas three parts finished, but the version of the Vedas,which should have been a priceless possession never got intothe stage of execution. Death, in whose shadow he had so longdwelt, took the pen from his hand, before it could gather up thelast gleanings of that royal intellect. But his ten masterpieces