Bengali people

“ In fact it is probable, that Bengal was mostly peopled by the descendants of the early citizens of Magadah, [9] hence Brahmanism could not thrive for many centuries amidst a people, who were the pioneers of Buddhism.
Bengali, a form of Paiçachi Prakrita.The Buddhist priests had already, in the latter part of the tenth century, begun to write books in Prākrita called the Gouḍa Prākrita. This Prākrita was called by the grammarian Kriṣṅa Pandit, who flourished in the twelfth century, as a form of Paiçāchī Prākrita or a Prākrita spoken by the evil spirits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I should state at the outset, that my inquiry regarding the origin and development of the Bengali Language will necessarily lead me to consider and discuss some facts relating to the ancient and modern inhabitants of Bengal; for, in my opinion, a discussion which is merely philological and does not take into account the people or peoples, whose language is the subject-matter of inquiry, is bound to prove abortive. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Some Bengali writers, who do not know what the real sound of য় is, make at times the unscientific and useless attempt to represent the sound by য + আ to convey the peculiar Bengali sound to the ears of the foreigners. They do not know that the spelling গ্যাল for গেল is highly misleading to the people all over India, for ই অ is the sound of both য, and য ফলা—outside the presidency of Bengal. The Indians of all other provinces, as well as the Europeans, who come to learn Bengali after studying Sanskrit or Hindi, are sure to pronounce গ্যাল as গিয়াল. ”

“ Chunda Beg went on. "He will make good carving, being very plump."
"The Bengali is the son and grandson of asses," grunted Gur Buksh. "He reads books!"
"The sahibs read books too," suggested the khansaman.
"That is different. They read the wisdom of their own people; the Bengali reads, and imagines he becomes one of them, and talks foolishness."
"That is true. Yet in this case perhaps it is not foolishness. There are many hungry beasts lurking down the track yonder."
"Hyenas!"
"Twenty thousand of them, says Fazl." ”

“ 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. ”

“ By the burning wrong they mean the Partition of the Bengali people into two separate and unconnected governments, Bengal proper to contain 18,000,000 of the race, and Eastern Bengal to contain 25,000,000. With the addition of the outlying and alien provinces of Behar, Chota Nagpur, and Orissa, Lord Curzon estimated the population of Bengal under the old capital of Calcutta at 54,000,000, of whom 9,000,000 would be Mohammedans ”

“ He had gained admission to the caste of Whigs, whose battle-cry was "Knowledge for the People," and his brilliant rhetoric overpowered the arguments of champions of oriental learning. Every one with a smattering of Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian, regrets the fact that those glorious languages have not been adequately cultivated in modern India. Bengali is a true daughter of the Sanskrit; it has Italian sweetness and German capacity for expressing abstract ideas. No degree of proficiency in an alien tongue can compensate for the neglect of the vernacular. ”

“ As meaning is always contextual, the inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent in general and the Bengali people and also those who belong to the marginalized nationalities in particular must recognize the central fact that the acknowledgement of situationally unique otherness is indeed unrepeatable. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ The flowing white dress of the Bengali male people is now coming into fashion in other provinces also, but the Bengalis and Oriyas are only found to use no head-dress at all. I mention these facts with the object of showing, how deep and abiding, how intense and extensive, has been the influence of Magadha culture in Bengal. We may, I daresay, be fully justified to assert, what has been asserted before, that we in Bengal represent to-day the old Behar, more than the modern Beharis do in Behar. ”

“ Incessant migrations and displacements of various tribes, make it uncertain as to which people formed the substantial lower stratum in Rāḍha, when the civilisation fostered in Karṇasuvarṇa, was humanizing the frontier lands of Vaṅga. The Puṇḍras are found mentioned in the Purāṇas, once in conjunction with the Suhmas and another time in North Bengal, on Assam frontier in the company of two other tribes, namely the Pravijayas and the Bhārgavas. ”

“ It is visible among the Muhammadans and Chandāls of Eastern Bengal, people who are probably indigenous in this tract, it is more marked among the Kāyasthas, the writer-caste of Bengal, which claims a western and Aryan origin. It reaches its maximum development among the Bengali Brāhmans. South of the Vindhya mountains, where the population is chiefly Dravidian, with a comparatively small and ancient mixture of northern blood, the prevalent type is mainly long-headed or medium-headed. The coast-population has been much affected by foreign influences. ”

“ Various are the sources from which we have derived material for our language, and there are languages which are allied to Bengali; how very careful we should therefore be to determine the history of our words and in fine to determine the history of our language, should be duly appreciated.
↑ Various tribes coming together with their tribal speeches to form one people, may give rise to many synonyms for a word, and most of these synonyms may for some time live in non-literary provincial dialects to assume literary dignity afterwards. ”

“ No special theory is required to account for the physical and mental qualities of the Mongolo-Dravidians of Bengal. No doubt the original population was Dravidian with a strong intermixture of Tibeto-Burmese blood, especially in the east and north-east. But the Hindu religion, developed in the sacred Midlands round Benares, spread to Bengal, bringing with it the Indo-European speech which in medieval times became the copious and supple Bengali tongue. From the west too came what we in Europe would call the gentry, the priestly and professional castes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He seldom wears head-covering, his hair is smoothly dressed, he is erect, and walks with a pompous stride. One can always tell a Bengali, as he appears neater in appearance than Indians from other sections. His looks betoken his thoughts, for he entertains the opinion that he is the essence of human kind in India, or even of the world. ”

“ I have left myself no space to finish this Pallab, or to make remarks on the peculiarities of the language, which in the older masters would more properly be called old Maithila than Bengali. It is nearly identical with the language still spoken in Tirhut, the ancient Mithili, and in Munger and Bhâgalpur, the ancient Magadha, than modern Bengali. As the Aryan race grew and multiplied it naturally poured out its surplus population in Bengal, and it is not only philologically obvious that Bengali is nothing more than a further, and very modern development of the extreme eastern dialect of Hindi. ”

“ I do not mean that each one of us should cling to the soil of his native village and that there is no need to stir outside it to gain knowledge or recognition. The Bengali cannot but be grateful to the forces of attraction which have drawn him out, roused his faculties, and broadened his mind by widening his sphere of activity. But the time has come to remind the sons of Bengal that they must not turn topsy-turvy the natural relations of within and without. Men go abroad to earn, and come home to spend. ”

“ The Bengali bears existence with a composure that neither accident nor chance can ruffle. He becomes silently rich or uncomplainingly poor. The emotional part of his nature is in strict subjection, his resentment enduring but unspoken, his gratitude of the sort that silently descends from generation to generation. ”

“ The fields are small, the trees and houses numerous. Nothing distant is to be seen. To the European the prospect is depressing. But to the Bengali it is his very life. These densely inhabited plains are his home. They have, therefore, all the attraction which familiar scenes in which men have grown up from childhood always have. A Bengali prefers them to high mountains. ”

“ Bengalis, unlike the rest of the Hindus, do not paint sectarian signs on their foreheads. The only trinket they do not completely despise is an expensive necklace; but even this is not common. Contrary to all expectations, the Mahrattis, with all their little effeminate ways, are the bravest tribe of India, gallant and experienced soldiers, a fact which has been demonstrated by centuries of fighting; but Bengal has never as yet produced a single soldier out of its sixty-five million inhabitants. Not a single Bengali is to be found in the native regiments of the British army. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”