Bengali language

“ I propose to pursue in this lecture, a stratigraphical study of the Bengali language with the help of the facts set forth and discussed in the previous lectures. In the present state of our knowledge, we cannot make a definite pronouncement of the ethnic elements that came into the composition of our people; we are not in possession of a history which deals with the evolution of our social structure. It was therefore only possible for me, to state in a general manner, of some of the influences that have been at work in shaping our speech in its present form. ”

“ No doubt, speaking generally, the vernacular languages of India are not worth studying for the sake of their literature; but if in this respect one vernacular is worthy of study more than another, it is certainly the Bengali language.
Many people in England regard the natives of India much in the same light as they regard the natives of Africa. A perusal of the following tale will at least give them some conception of the stage of civilization at which the Bengali race has arrived, and of the intellectual attainments of the educated classes. ”

“ It must be noticed that the words borrowed from other languages have all to conform to the genius of the languages into which they are adopted. This is what takes place in the Bengali language and this is what as a matter of course takes place in Hindi even though the speakers, through whose agency the adoption is accomplished, are Muhammadans. [2] That an adherence to an unscientific situation has a mischievous effect on education must be duly appreciated. ”

“ The Bill made its appearance in the Bengali Government Gazette only on the 12th February; but still that would not be sufficient, as the Bengali language is only read and understood in only one of the provinces out of the immense extent of territories subject to British rule in India, and that, too, by a comparatively small portion of its inhabitants. Its enactment will, therefore, be without the knowledge of the people whose interests are to be affected by it. ”

“ As many old Aryan words have been reduced to unreal forms in the প্রাকৃত, it will be interesting to notice the following words, more than 50 in number, as have not undergone any decay or অপভ্রংশ in Bengal from remotest antiquity till now; the words here grouped together are such as are used and understood by even the uneducated people in rural areas in Bengal. Some of these words have no doubt changed their original meaning, but have not changed their form. The words marked with asterisks were not in use in the early Vedic time, but have been in use in Sanskrit, since a very remote time. ”

“ The palace of comparative grammar cannot be built without bricks, and the bricks are made up of the facts of each particular language.
For many reasons, Bengali, in itself, is specially deserving of careful study. With a literature going back for several centuries, and preserved with some care, it gives opportunities for the study of its history that are wanting in some other forms of Indian speech. It ts a typical descendant of the great language that, under the name of Māgadhī Prakrit, was the vernacular of eastern North India for many centuries. ”

“ In our honorific তিনি, there is the pronoun 'ন' in an enclitic manner; in Pāli, we get this 'ন' in the accusative case only in the form of নং (= তাহাকে) ; 'that respected he' is the round about expression to indicate honour: তেনার and তেন্‌রা (his) are not unusual in the mouth of our vulgar people. The Bengalis who settled in Orissa, long ago, carried with them, as a matter of course many archaic forms, and their descendants now, not being in touch with the progress and change effected in Bengal, use তেনার (his) , তান্‌রান (they) , etc., very commonly. ”

“ It is a striking phenomenon that there are some linguistic peculiarities, wherein Oriya agrees with Assamese, and differs from Bengali. This phenomenon can only be explained by this, that Bengal as a progressive country has altered the early forms, while the archaic forms have been retained in Orissa and Assam. We can safely hold, that the Māgadhi language, as was once fashioned and modified on the soil of Bengal, got into Assam to take a fresh root there to develop into a new language under the influence of a language altogether foreign to the Aryan speech. ”

“ Though the letters চ to ঝ are made markedly sibilants in Eastern Bengal, as they are done in the Dravidian lands, শ is seldom rightly pronounced by the ordinary people of Eastern Bengal; the reduction of শ to হ in Eastern Bengal (or more properly to a half হ with a wavy swing) cannot wholly be attributed to Mongolian influence, since such a change of sound, may be noticed in other parts of Bengal as well; the word গোশাল has been changed into গো-হাল or গোয়াল all throughout Bengal. In the Sambalpur tract, we hear হেইঠি (there) for সেইঠি of standard Oriya ”

“ I proceed now to show from the history of evolution of our metrical system, that the accent system which now prevails, has been the accent system of the Bengali-speaking people, from the time about which faint sug­gestions can only be made, by taking a stand at the shadowy threshold of dim past. The history of the evolution of human institutions has made us familiar with this phenomenon, that our verse with our metrical system owes its origin to tribal festive songs, which in their turn originated from primitive expressions of emotions. ”

“ A word may anyhow be made to look like a Sanskrit form, but it is to be seen whether such a form or its prototype was at all in common use in old time. In their zeal to derive all Bengali words from Sanskrit roots and stems, such old and obsolete words are at times drawn out of the Sanskrit Dictionary as were not even in use in Sanskrit for centuries previous to our time. We cannot avoid looking to the people and their antecedents in our inquiry relating to language. ”

“ It is no doubt a speciality in Bengal that though the real portion of the name of a man does not require any additional word, such words, as চন্দ্র, নাথ, etc., are added to the names, but it is not on account of this alone, that the Bengali names indicate the nationality of the men bearing the names to the people of other provinces. ”

“ The French prose literature was the best model it could have. Want of freedom and poverty of the Bengalees are great obstacles to the development and progress of their national language. The decrease of an eager desire for a knowledge of Bengali, on the part of the natives of the country, generated by the predominant influence of English, and want of good models are among other very powerful obstacles. No doubt, English is, at present, a good model, but it also serves to make the Bengali literature impregnated with foreign ideas and notions, a state of things not at all desirable. ”

“ How one is liable to mistake one old language for another allied speech, may even be illustrated by an example of a sentence composed in a modern language. The line of our poet Rabindranath which reads, হে আদি জননী সিন্ধু, বসুন্ধরা সন্তান তোমার, can be easily pronounced as Assamese if the Bengali metre is disregarded; Aryan Vernaculars other than Assamese can also very well claim the line to be theirs, but for the grammatical form তোমার, which occurs at the end of the line. ”

“ Instances of like nature, where Mahammadan Emperors and Chiefs initiated and patronised translations of Sanskrit and Persian works into Bengali, are numerous, and we are led to believe, that when the powerful Moslem Sovereigns of Bengal granted this recognition to the Vernacular language in their courts, Hindu Rājās naturally followed suit. The Brahmins could not resist the influence of this high patronage; they were therefore compelled to favour the language they had hated so much, and latterly they themselves came forward to write poems and compile works of translation in Bengali. ”

“ It will be necessary, therefore, to refer to the accent systems of our neighbouring tribes to solve some points of difficulty. In ignorance of the fact that some non-Aryan speeches exercised some influence upon Bengali, and misled by the description of our language as Sanskritic, many capable scholars have devoted themselves of late to the ingenious but wasteful work of digging out Sanskrit roots and stems for such Bengali words and inflections as are entirely of other origin. ”

“ In the south-east, near Chittagong, corruption has gone even further, and the local dialect, which is practically a new language, is unintelligible to a man from Western Bengal. Throughout the eastern districts there is a strong tendency to epenthesis, e.g. kāli is pronounced kāĭl. A more important dialectic difference in Bengali is that between the literary speech and the vernacular. The literary vocabulary is highly Sanskritized, so much so that it is not understood by any native of Bengal who has not received special instruction in it. ”

“ We frequently come across such lines in old Bengali works, as—"Naturally Bengali poems are faulty" [11] (Vijay gupta) "Not fit to he discussed in a vernacular poem" [12] (Kavīndra) —implying, that Bengali was quite an unfit medium for conveying any serious or high thought.
How could Bengali obtain favour in the Hindu Courts?The question is: how could the poor Vernacular of Bengal find recognition in the courts of the kings, inspite of this opposition of the Brahmins? Every Hindu Court gloried in keeping a number of Sanskrit scholars attached to it. ”

“ The Bengali boys learn the normal sound of Bengali এ even when they commence to lisp in their early infancy. All that we should do, is to frame rules regarding the normal and Sanskritic pronunciation of the vowel এ. As we have to learn the sounds of the vowels of the foreigners from the foreigners, our special Bengali sound has to be learned by those who are not Bengalis. ”

“ When in consequence of Sanskrit renaissance, our Bengali verbs were looked down upon as inelegant and vulgar, the Sanskrit verbal nouns were formed according to the rules of Sanskrit grammar, and a new method of expression being devised, the verbal nouns were made to be governed by the verbs of 'ভূ' or 'কৃ' origin. খাইতেছি, চলিবে, শুইল are the natural and genuine Bengali forms, while ভোজন করিতেছি, গমন করিবে, শয়ন করিল are unnatural Sanskritie forms. The influence of the Pandits became so very much dominating, that some verbs (denoting mental acts generally) were reduced wholly to noun forms ”

“ This shews very unmistakably, that a genuine genetic bond of affinity exist between Pāli and Bengali; the people who had originally Pāli for their language, could only retain the obsolete things as so many survivals, in course of successive transformation of their speech. We are at times led to form wrong notions regarding the origin of Bengali, by looking to the non-Prākṛtic or rather the Sanskritic form of many Bengali expressions ”

“ Never can a living people change radically or discontinuously, nor can its natural and organised mode of thinking, which expresses itself in the form or structure of its speech, be radically changed.
(iii) My next proposition is that what is called a patois or a rude or vulgar speech, is never a separate language. Isolation and want of culture bring about deformities, and these deformities characterise a language as a rude dialect. The language of the Māl Pāhāḍis is as much Bengali as the language of the peasants of Northern Yorkshire is English. ”

“ Though we cannot judge the nationality of men of old times by the form of their names alone, the peculiarity of Bengali names may be studied to see if men, having such names ভুসুকু, কাহ্নূ, can be supposed to have flourished in Bengal. ”

“ It must be a familiar experience, that from the sound alone from a good distance, a Bengali can know whether an Oriya poem or some Hindi দোঁহা's are being recited. Even where there is no musical chanting, the character of the metres will indicate the characteristic difference. All this is due wholly to different accent systems. As the style of a language is the expression of the thought of the speakers, so is the metrical system in a language, due to the special accent system of the people. ”

“ In respect of the language of the above-quoted প্রাকৃত verse, a few remarks may be offered. The metre is no doubt Hindi: but there are many forms which are foreign to Western Hindi, and which prevailed only in a comparatively recent time in Eastern Māgadhi, which is undeni­ably very closely allied to Bengali. তই for thou is Eastern Māgadhi; this very form was in use in old Bengali and it is now current in Assamese. The Māgadhi form ইৎথি became a special property of Bengali amid the speeches of the Eastern Gauḍi group ”

“ In such a use as আমা হতে হেন কার্য্য না হবে সাধন, the word হতে signifies certainly instrumentality, but its ablative sense is also noticeable in the use; the action 'flowing out of me' can be construed to be the underlying idea.
Dative.—In Assamese we get 'লৈ' as a special dative case-ending, while in Bengali and Oriya, we have the same 'কু' or 'ক' or 'কে'-suffix both for accusative and dative. This 'লৈ,' noticeable also in Nepalese and in a Behari dialect, is the reduced form of 'লাগি,' in use in Bengali as well as in Oriya; তোমার লাগি (for you) is rather a poetic use in Bengali. ”

“ Many of the views expressed may ultimately prove to be wrong, with the aecession of new facts—as, for instance, from the systematic study of the dialects of Bengali and of the cognate speeches. The work here submitted, however, is the onteome of sincere labour in a subject for which I have the greatest love, and it is here presented as an Essay towards an Historical and Comparative Grammar of Bengali, and as a contribution towards the scientific study of the Modern Aryan languages of India. ”