Bhagavata, known as Katha-Bhagavata, the word Katha being prefixed to titles of books written in prose a distin- guished from verse. Katha-Gita is a monument of religious Assamese prose which has a conventional Sanskritic ring and a marked affinity to the artifical diction of old Assamese poetry. The style though not racy has a majestic simplicity of its own. At the end of every chapter the author has inserted a brief peroration pointing to the glory of Srikrishna and urging all men and women to attain salvation through the adoration of Srikrishna, Mr. Goswami published this book with his introduction in 1914. Sir Prafullachandra Roy, who presided over the Tezpur session of the Assam Students Conference, marvelled at the antiquity of Assamese prose literature and recorded his impressions in a language worthy of the scientist and patriot,—“Indeed the prose Gita of Bhatta- deva composed in the sixteenth century is unique of its kind, I had an opportunity of coming across an excellent edition of this book which we owe to the patriotism and scholarship of Pandit Hemchandra Goswami It is a priceless treasure. Assamese prose literature developed to a stage in the far distant sixteenth century which no other literature of the world reached except the writings of Hooker and Latimer in England, There has been & controversy for long about the independence and identity of the Assamese language, This is extremely foolish. This is due, I hold, to the provin- cial patriotism and the national conceit of the Bengalees living in Assam, The Katha-Gita shows clearly that the Assamese literature developed to standard in the sixteenth century which the Bengalee literature had reached only in the time of Iswar Chandra and Bankim Chandra. In fact, if some Assamese scholars now get up and say that it is the Bengalee who has borrowed his prose from Assamese literature and enriched his own, it will be very difficult to dodge him. I think the question may now be considered as solved and settled for good. I say this not as a representa-
