topics: |  bengali | lit | history

Fascinatingly erudite text. Owing to the relative unimportance of the Bengali language in today's world (though it remains more relevant in Bangladesh), much of this material is not very well known. This volume, published by Sahitya Akademi, is out of print.

Sukumar Sen was an amazing figure. Lived and worked all through in Calcutta. Originally trained in classical Sanskrit at the Sanskrit College, he studied comparative philology at Calcutta University (Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay was among his teachers) . He wrote extensively in English and Bengali on matters related to philology, literary history, and myth. He worked extensively in ancient manuscripts, and discovered the oldest manuscript for Jayadeva's Gitagovindam.

Today, he is primarily known for the Bengali work বাঙ্গালা সাহিত্যের ইতিহাস (history of Bengali literture, 1940) - considered an authoritative text, still in print.

Here we have an English text on the same theme, written two decades later. By then Sen was quite well-known, and he convinced Jawaharlal Nehru to contribute a foreword which adds little to the text.

I excerpt a large chunk from the first chapter, dealing with the history of the bengali language.

Evolution of the Bengali language

Bengali belongs to the easternmost branch, called Aryan or Indo-Iranian, of the Indo-European family of languages. Its direct ancestor is a form of Prakrit or Middle Indo-Aryan which had descended from Sanskrit or Old Indo-Aryan. Sanskrit was the spoken as well as the literary language of Aryandom until circa 500 B.c., after which it remained for nearly two thousand years the dominant literary language as well as the lingua franca among the cultured and the erudite throughout the subcontinent. Sanskrit has always been a potent influence in the evolution of Indo-Aryan through all its stages of linguistic and literary history.

By the fifth century B.C. Indo-Aryan (i.e. Sanskrit as spoken by the masses) had developed dialectal characteristics. and by 250 B.c. its structure had completed certain definite changes. The structural change was such that the language now presented a phase that was different from Old Indo-Aryan, although there was as yet no question of mutual unintelligibility. This new phase of Indo-Aryan is called Middle Indo-Aryan, or in a broad sense Prakrit.

The edicts of Asoka (circa 250 B.c.) are. the oldest known records of contemporary spoken Aryan languages in India, and these records present the Middle Indo-Aryan language in the four regional varieties or dialects, viz. north-western, south-western, east central and eastern. These regional dialects, themselves changing in course of time, continued as the spoken languages of Aryan-speaking India for more than a thousand years, until they underwent another -drastic change of character and developed into the several New Indo-Aryan languages we speak now.

The Middle Indo-Aryan language (or dialects, to be precise) natural}y did
not remain static like Sanskrit during its history of a millennium and a
half. In its earliest form, as seen in the epigraphical records belonging
to the pre-Christian centuries, Middle Indo-Aryan looks like a mutilated
and simplified form of Sanskrit, and its dialects were not so sharply
differentiated from one another as to become mutually
unintelligible. Epigraphical records in the pre-Christian centuries are
all written in Middle Indo-Aryan.

For the first two centuries after Christ, Middle Indo-Aryan continued to
be used almost exclusively as such, but in these records a growing
influence of Sanskrit diction is progressively noticeable. This indicates
that the Middle Indo-Aryan was then fast receding from the Old Indo-Aryan
pattern and that the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were then becoming
mutually unintelligible. By A.D. 400 Sanskrit became the supreme language
and by this time some of the regional Middle Indo-Aryan speeches, the
prakrits of the old grammarians, had developed a rigid literary form.

But long before that, Middle Indo-Aryan had evolved a powerful literary
language under the overall influence of Sanskrit.  This is Pali of the
southern Buddhists. It is based on a western or west-central dialect.  But
outside of Buddhism a simpler form of it was used as a kind of lingua
franca from one end to the other of Aryan-speaking India. This common
literary language appears in the Udayagiri cave inscription of Kharavela
(first century B.c.) at Bhuvaneswar in Orissa.  It seems to have been
developed in Malwa (Ujjain-Bhilsa region) which was a centre not only of
commerce and foreign contact but was a hub of religion and culture as
well. Speakers of the different Middle Indo-Aryan dialects and of other
languages from and outside India assembled here so that there was a
necessity and urgency for the evolution of a common Indian language. It
may be remembered in this connection that Pali, especially in its later
phase, was used by persons whose mother-tongue was not Indo-Aryan.

Influences of non-Sanskrit languages

Dravidian has always been the other most important linguistic stock in
India. A very large number of Sanskrit vocables came from Dravidian, and
the influence of the latter in the structural development of the former is
far from negligible. It is quite conceivable that it was the impact of the
Dravidian speeches that largely conditioned the change of Old Indo-Aryan
to Middle Indo-Aryan. It is an admitted fact that the influx of Dravidian
words in Sanskrit was the largest during the few centuries immediately
preceding the Christian era, and this was the formative period of Middle
Indo-Aryan. The Dravidian influence therefore was inherent in Middle
Indo-Aryan, and Bengali as well as its sister Indo-Aryan speeches show the
impact of Dravidian mainly as an inheritance.

The influence of the third linguistic stock, Austro-Asiatic, was no less
significant than that of Dravidian, although in Indo-Aryan the extent of
this influence has not yet been fully gauged. There was obviously a large
borrowing of essential vocables, but the absence of any literary record of
the Austro-Asiatic speeches of India stands in the way of a precise
estimation of its influence on the phonology and grammar of
Indo-Aryan. Nevertheless in the contents of Indo-Aryan literature,
especially in the motifs ot folk-tales and of some important myths, the
existence of a substantial Austro-Asiatic substratum is undeniable.

The fourth linguistic stock in India _is Tibeto-Chinese.  Its influence in
Indo-Aryan is confined to the borrowing of a very limited number of
words. On the New Indo-Aryan languages spoken in the regions nearest to
the foothills of the Himalayas the impact of the Tibeto-Chinese has been
considerable. But here also, except in Assamese and in some contiguous
dialects of Bengali where the phonology was somewhat affected, the
structure of Indo-Aryan rem:tins unchanged.  

Old and Middle Indo-Aryan; ApabhraMsa and AbahaTTha

The development of Indo-Aryan from its earliest form to the latest shows
the following strata:

A. Old Indo-Aryan: (i) spoken, (ii) literary (Vedic and classical
   Sanskrit}; and (iii) mixed Sanskrit,

B. Middle Indo-Aryan, evolved out of the spoken Old Indo-Aryan and showing
   three stages: (i) Primary Middle Indo-Aryan recorded in the Asokan and
   other early inscriptions, and Pali ; (ii) Secondary Middle Indo-Aryan
   or the Prakrits, represented by MahArAshtrI, SaurasenI, PaishAcI,
   ArdhamAgadhI and mAgadhI; and (iii) Tertiary Middle Indo-Aryan
   represented by ApabhraMsa and its later phase Laukika or ApabhraShTa
   (AvahaTTha).

C. New Indo-Aryan evolved out of ApabhraMsa and Laukika and represented
   by the modern Indo-Aryan speeches such as Assamese, Avadhi, Bengali,
   Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Marathi, Maithili, Nepali, Oriya,
   Panjabi, Rajasthani, Sindhi, etc.

Like Sanskrit, ApabhraMsa-AvahaTTha was a literary language, and in the
available records it shows remarkably little local variation ; practically
the same form of the language appears in poems written in Gujarat and in
Bengal.  But the spoken language conditioned by the regional linguistic
and ethnic environments took up the different regional· characteristics,
culminating in the birth of the different regional New Indo-Aryan
languages. The emergence of these New Indo-Aryan speeches was· not all
synchronized. But some of them, including Bengali, certainly originated by
the middle of the tenth century at the latest.

Old and Middle Bengali

Since its origin from ApabhrAMSa-AvahaTTha, the Bengali language has
passed through two successive stages of development which may be called
Old and Middle Bengali. It is now in its third or modern stage. The Old
Bengali stage roughly covered the period 950-1350. The Middle Bengali
stage stretched from 1350 to 1800, and the modern Bengali stage has
commenced from 1800. The Middle Bengali stage presents two distinct
strata, the early and the late. The early Middle Bengali period was
1350-1500 and the late Middle Bengali period 1500-1800. The main features
distinguishing the late Middle Bengali from the early are: (i) the
creation of plural case-endings of nouns and pronouns, (ii) disappearance
of the distinction of number in the finite verb and creation of the
periphrastic tenses, and (iii) admission of a large number of Persian
words.

During the entire Middle Bengali period we find a distinct poetic language
or jargon that was cultivated almost exclusively by the Vaishnav lyric
poets. This poetic language or Kuntsprache is called Brajabuli, meaning
the language of Vraja (Brindavan) and it was by no means exclusively used
by the Bengali writers. The Vaishnav poets from Assam and a few devotees
from Orissa also wrote in Brajabuli. The language has as its basis the
tradition of AvahaTTha poetry strengthened by the pattern of early
Maithili poets like Umapati and Vidyapati who were among the first to
cultivate the diction. There was no doubt the influence of the local
language, but that influence emerged only towards the end of the Middle
Bengali period. The vogue of Brajabuli did not die out with Middle
Bengali.  With the strong tradition of Vaishnav poetry it lingered
throughout the nineteenth century. Its last great writer was the young
Rabindranath Tagore. The most fruitful of his earliest attempts in lyric
composition are the songs written in Brajabuli and bearing the signature
'BhanusiMha'.

For old Bengali the only records are the mystic caryA songs discovered
in a MS from Nepal by Haraprasad Shastri, a few fragments of such
songs. and verses quoted in some old texts and commentaries, some four
hundred words occurring in SarvAnanda's commentary on AmarakoSha and a
few placenames and stray words occurring in the copper-plate grants dating
between the ninth and the thirteenth century.

The language of the caryA songs [caryApada] betrays some lingering
traces of AvahaTTha, but that is not at all unexpected.  AvahaTTha was
besides Sanskrit the only other literary language of the day, and some of
the writers of the caryA songs wrote also in AvahaTTha (and in Sanskrit
too).

The language of the caryA songs is basically vernacular, but at the same
time it is also something of a literary language.  The main dialect seems
to have been that of West Bengal, but there are ample traces of dialectal
variation, indicating that the writers did not all belong to West Bengal.

Middle Bengali as a whole appears as a pan-Bengali literary language based
mainly on the dialect of West Bengal.  But the early writers hailing from
the different parts of the country and its fringes did not hesitate to use
their own dialectal forms and idioms.  For instance, some of the most
influential followers of Chaitanya came from Sylhet and Chittagong, and
through their writings a good number of words from the dialects of those
regions were introduced in the written language.  There was a steady flow
of Sanskrit words (apart from those inherited, which form the basic part
of the vocabulary of the language) and these came generally via the
popular mythological and epic stories that formed some of the main themes
of Middle Bengali literature. Continued borrowing from Sanskrit no doubt
strengthened the literary language but at the same time it was
accentuating its separation from the spoken tongue.

Persian influence

At first the divergent tendency was somewhat checked by the slow but
increasing percolation of Persian (including Arabic and some Turkish words
in the language, and this kept the written and spoken forms of the
language near to each other.  So long as Bengal remained an independent
kingdom the Persian borrowings were confined to essential words and
therefore limited in number. But from the later part of the sixteenth
century when Akbar annexed the country to his empire there remained no
longer any barrier to the flow of such foreign words into the Bengali
vocabulary.

The administration was now mainly in the hands of Muslim officers from
Delhi and Agra, who naturally cared little for the culture of the province
and nothing for its language. Persian was the official language of
administration, law and commerce. Agra and Delhi directed the fashion of
the ambitious and the elite, and inter-provincial communication and
commerce were considerable and uninterrupted.

The inflow of Persian words was accelerated till the middle of the
eighteenth century when the English took over the administration of the
province. But by that time Bengali had acquired more than two thousand
more or less essential foreign vocables, developed even a case-ending or
two out of Persian (and Arabic) and evolved a documentary prose style that
was as much Bengali as Persian. Now English words, at first only those
very necessary in business and administration.  of law, began to be
adopted in Bengali, but the position and influence of Persian was not
impaired until the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, 1838 to be
exact, when Bengali and English replaced Persian in the field of law,
revenue and administration.

Portuguese and English

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries another European language
had contributed not a few words that became essential vocables in
Bengali. This was Portuguese.  The Portuguese traders and adventurers
brought many new commodities in India, and these commodities with their
Portuguese names came to stay permanently. The Portuguese missionaries
brought Christianity in Bengal, and naturally there came in a number of
Portuguese words relating to the Church and worship, used by the Bengali
followers of the Catholic faith. But excepting two, girjA-church, and
pAdri Christian priest, such words were not adopted in the general
vocabulary of the language.

With the consolidation of the British power and spread of English
education English began to exert an increasing influence on Bengali. This
influence is evident mainly in two directions: one, adoption of English
words which had no synonyms or near-synonyms in Bengali or the objects
signified by the words were unknown in the land; two, development of a
Bengali literary prose style under a not very direct influence of the
English language and literature.  There can be no question of conscious
imitation or borrowing here, but modern Bengali prose possesses many
idioms, turns and twists of expression which were undoubted(y induced by
the thought-pattern of English.

Regional variations

There are four main regional dialect groups of Bengali learly noticeable
from the seventeenth century. These are:
    (i) the dialects of West Bengal proper; 
   (ii) the dialects of North Bengal; 
  (iii) the dialects of North-east Bengal, to
   	 which Old Assamese was once closely connected; and 
   (iv) the dialects of East and South-east Bengal. 

Between the first two the difference is not always very sharp. It is quite
probable that originally a single dialect was spoken over West and North
Bengal. The third dialect group shows a probable impact of the
neighbouring non-Aryan speeches. The subdialect of South-east Bengal,
however, shows considerable impact of the Tibeto-Burman speeches on its
peculiar phonetic development. The sub-dialect of East Bengal indicates
some affinity with the dialect of West Bengal as there was continuous
migration of the upper class people from the west to the east.
t% 

Literary Forms

Bengali at the present day has two literary styles. One is called
'sAdhubhaSha'· (elegant language) and the other 'calitbhAShA'· (current
language). The former is the traditional literary style based on Middle
Bengali of the sixteenth century. The latter is practically a creation of
the present century, and is based on the cultivated form of the dialect
(the standard colloquial) spoken in Calcutta by the educated people
originally coming from districts bordering on the lower reaches of the
Hooghly. The difference between the two literary styles is not very
sharp. The vocabulary is practically the same.  The difference lies mainly
in the forms of the pronoun and the verb.  The SadhubhAShA has the old and
heavier forms while the CalitbhAShA uses the modern and lighter forms. The
former shows a partiality for lexical words and for compound words of the
Sanskrit type, and the latter prefers colloquial words, phrases and
idioms.

The CalitbhaShA was first seriously taken up by Pramatha Chaudhuri at the
instance of Rabindranath Tagore during the early years of the first World
War.  Soon after Tagore practically discarded the SadhubhaShA, and
CalitbhaShA is now generally favoured by writers who have no particular
fascination for the traditional literary style. The SadhubhaShA is always
easy to write but it is somewhat faded in signification and jaded in
rhythm.

[discussion of Bengali script; end of ch.1]

Pali poetry

early Pali poetry contains some thinly disguised specimens of early Middle
Indo-Aryan popular poetry. A good instance is Dhaniya Sutta which is a
dialogue between Dhaniya, a prosperous farmer, and the Buddha, recounting,
the superiority of the spiritual good over the earthly. The structure of
the poem echoes the style of the dialogue hymns of the Rigveda. The first
two verses are translated below:

Dhaniya: My rice pot is boiling; my cows are milked ; I live for
	generations on the bank of Mahi ; My cottage is ·well thatched ;
	the sacred flame is kept alight.  Now, (Rain-)god, you may pour as
	much as you like.

The Buddha: I am free from anger; my passion is gone; I stay only for a
	night on the bank of the Mahi ; I have no thatch over my head ;
	the fire in me is quenched. Now, (Rain-)god, you may pour as much
	as you like. p.12

Middle Indo-Aryan (mAgadhI) poem from 3d c. BC

The only specimen of free composition in Middle Indo-Aryan is a
three-lined verse written in an eastern or east central dialect entirely
agreeing with MAgadhI of the Prakrit grammarians.

	Sutanuka by name, a temple dancer ;
	A man from Banaras loved her-
	Devadinna by name, a coin tester.

From the script it is inferred that the inscription belongs to the third
century B.C.  p.13

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