GOVINDA SÁMANTA. CHAPTER I. PREMISES WHAT THE READER IS TO EXPECT, AND WHAT The village life, and every care that reigns Crabbe. I therefore anxious to GENTLE READER, in case you have come with great expectations to the perusal of this humble performance, I deem it proper to undeceive you at the very outset; lest after going through it, or through a good bit of it, you are disappointed, and then turn round and abuse me as a fellow who, with a view to attract customers, has put a misleading sign-board over the door of his shop. purpose, like a tradesman who, though turn a penny, wishes to obtain it in way, to tell you at once, in all sincerity and good faith, what you are to expect, and what you are not to expect, in this hall of refreshment; so that after being acquainted with the bill of fare, you may either begin to partake of the repast or not, just as you please, and thus save yourself the trouble of sitting down to a dinner not congenial to your taste, and me the abuse justly merited by a man who holds out an honest B expectations which he cannot fulfil: and, after the approved manner of the popular preachers of the day, I shall treat first of the second point. The first head, then, of this preliminary discourse, orto use a still more learned word—of this prolegomenon, is what the schoolmen would call the negative point, namely, what you are not to expect in this book. And firstly, of the first point. You are not to expect anything marvellous or wonderful in this little book. My great Indian predecessors-the latchet of whose shoes I do not pretend to be worthy to unloose-Válmiki, Vyás, and the compilers of the Puránas, have treated of kings with ten heads and twenty arms; of a monkey carrying the sun in his arm-pit; of demons churning the universal ocean with a mountain for a churn-staff; of beings, man above and fish below, or with the body of a man and the head of an elephant ; of sages, with truly profound stomachs, who drank up the waters of the ocean in one sip; of heroes as tall as the lofty towers of the golden Lanká; of whole regions inhabited by rational snakes, having their snake-kings, snake-ministers, snake-soldiers hissing and rushing forth to battle. And some of my European predecessors, like Swift and Rabelais, have spoken of men whose pockets were capacious enough to hold a whole nation of diminutive human beings; and of giants, under whose tongue a whole army, with its park of artillery, its pontoon bridges, its commissariat stores, its ambulance, its field post, its field telegraph, might take shelter from the pouring rain and the pitiless storm, and bivouac with security under its fleshy canopy. Such marvels, my reader, you are not to expect in this unpretending volume. The age of marvels has gone by; giants do not pay now-a-days; scepticism is the order of the day; and the veriest stripling, whose throat is still full of his mother's milk, says to his father, when a story is told him: "Papa, is it true?" Secondly, you are not to expect in this authentio history any thrilling incidents. Romantic adventures, intricate evolutions of the plot, striking occurrences, remarkable surprises, hair-breadth escapes, scenes of horror, at the recital of which the hair stands on end -the stuff of which the sensational novels of the day are made-have no place here. Thrilling incidents occur but seldom in the life-history of ninetynine persons out of a hundred, and in that of most Bengal ráiyats never. If you, gentle reader, choose to come in here, you must make up your mind to go without romantic adventures and the like; and, as for horrors, this country inn has not the means to make you sup off them. Thirdly, you are not to expect any love-scenes. The English reader will be surprised to hear this. In his opinion there can be no novel without love-scenes. A novel without love is to him the play of Hamlet, with Hamlet's part left out. But I cannot help it. I would fain introduce love-scenes; but in Bengal-and for the matter of that in all India -they do not make love in the English and honourable sense of that word. Unlike the butterfly, whose courtship, Darwin assures us, is a very long affair, the Bengali does not court at all. Marriage is an affair managed entirely by the parents and guardians of bachelors and spinsters, coupled with the good offices of a professional person, whom the reader may meet |