Bengali

“ Those who can teach their country, consider it beneath their social position to do so. It is degrading for the dashing young Bengali who writes and talks English like an Englishman, to be caught writing a Bengali book. And if anything induces him to stoop to this vulgar course, the book comes out stealthily, without the great man's name on the title-page, and hence many of our best books are anonymous. There are a few honourable exceptions, and these men have done an immense good to Bengali literature. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. Its grammar preserves numerous archaic or pseudo-archaic forms, which are invariably contracted in the colloquial speech of even the most highly educated. For instance, “I do” is expressed in the literary dialect by karitēchi, but in the vernacular by kȯrcci or kȯcci. Oriya and Assamese may be said to have no dialects. ”

“ In languages such as Panjabi which have little or no literature, and in the speech of the peasantry all over India, they are few in number. In the modern literary Bengali a false standard of literary taste has led to their employment in overwhelming numbers, and the homely vigorous home-speech, which is itself capable of expressing every idea that the mind of man can conceive, flounders about awkwardly enough under the weight of its borrowed plumes. The native vocabulary of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars is thus made up of tadbhavas, dēśyas and tatsamas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ As I am not of the number of those who entertain the idea that it is possible, even if it were desirable, that English should at any time supersede Bengali as the general language of the country, and looking to our educated students as the channels through whom mainly European ideas and opinions are to be communicated to the mass of their countrymen, I must consider it a thing deeply to be regretted, that they are not as highly distinguished by the elegance with which they speak and write their own language, as by the command which they have gained over ours. ”

“ In an introductory essay on Bengali novels, in his translation of Babu Bunkim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel ‘Kopal Kundala,’ Mr. Phillips writes:— The position and character of Bengali literature is peculiar. A backward people have, so to speak, rushed into civilization at one bound: old customs and prejudices have been displaced, uno ictu, by a state of enlightenment and advanced ideas. The educated classes have suddenly found themselves face to face with the richest gems of Western learning and literature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 may be that there are few systematic readers of Bengali, because there are so few Bengali books capable of being read through. But it is not altogether correct to entertain the idea that the absolute number of purely Bengali readers are in reality so few. The artizan and the shopkeeper who keep their own accounts, the village zemindar and the mofussil lawyer, the humbler official employé whose English carries him no further than the duties of his office, and the small proprietor who has as little to do with English as with office, all these classes read Bengali and Bengali only ”

“ 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 transitional form between the Proto-Bengali one and the final Bengali form is the one in gaṇe and suṇaha in L. 1 where the bisecting vertical line in the curve of the Māndā inscription, seems to have become a horizontal cross bar. The final form shows the elimination of this cross bar in Suṇaha, L. 3. ”

“ 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 have given previously a list of Dravidian words as are in use in Bengali; I add a few more examples of those words which have been wrongly considered by some to be Sanskrit derivatives; they are; (1) Kaṭāl as a variant of খাড়ল or খাড়ি, indicates sea in Tamil, and it is this word which is used in Bengali to signify the swelling of the sea, as অমবস্যার কটাল; (2) নড় (to move) of Tamil is exactly the word which is in use in Bengali and Oriya ”

“ Bengali literature has made such wonderful progress because it cut through all the artificial barriers which would have shut it off from communion with world literature, and because it has regulated its growth in such a way as to be able to make its own, naturally and with ease, the science and ideals of the West... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This method of representation will therefore be of no help to the outsiders, and will have the mischievous effect of teaching the Bengali boys a very wrong sound of য, which they have to deal with in their Sanskrit text-books. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”