A SPECIAL interest attaches to the six short hymns which I now lay before the public for the first time. Not only do they represent a large and widely popular class of compositions hitherto almost unknown to European scholars, but they are at the same time absolutely the earliest known specimens of Bengali literature, and thus present to the philologist a means of solving many very obscure and difficult problems, while to the student of Indian philosophy they exhibit to the fullest extent the natural and unrestrained sentiments of a follower of the Vaishnava creed its first and purest stage.

A SPECIAL interest attaches to the six short hymns which I now lay before the public for the first time. Not only do they represent a large and widely popular class of compositions hitherto almost unknown to European scholars, but they are at the same time absolutely the earliest known specimens of Bengali literature, and thus present to the philologist a means of solving many very obscure and difficult problems, while to the student of Indian philosophy they exhibit to the fullest extent the natural and unrestrained sentiments of a follower of the Vaishnava creed its first and purest stage.

A SPECIAL interest attaches to the six short hymns which I now lay before the public for the first time. Not only do they represent a large and widely popular class of compositions hitherto almost unknown to European scholars, but they are at the same time absolutely the earliest known specimens of Bengali literature, and thus present to the philologist a means of solving many very obscure and difficult problems, while to the student of Indian philosophy they exhibit to the fullest extent the natural and unrestrained sentiments of a follower of the Vaishnava creed its first and purest stage.