89-606: The Gauḍa kingdom (Gauṛa Rājya) ( Bengali : গৌড় রাজ্য) was a kingdom during the Classical era in the Indian subcontinent , which originated in the Gauda region of Bengal (modern-day West Bengal and Bangladesh ) in 4th century CE or possibly earlier. A Buddhist Mahāyāna Text Mañjuśrī-Mūlakalpa records the existence of Gauda kingdom in Bengal before it was replaced by Gupta Empire in
178-527: A Jain monk from the "Rara" country erected a Jain image. A Khajuraho inscription mentions that the Chandela ruler imprisoned the wives of the rulers of various kingdoms, which included Rāḍha. The 12th century Naihati copper-plate inscription of the Sena ruler Vallalasena mentions Rāḍha as the ancestral place of his dynasty. Various ancient and medieval region offer clues about the location and historical extent of
267-492: A bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from
356-590: A different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west. Bengali exhibits diglossia , though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax : Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises
445-480: A diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following: In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic ; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as in সহযোগিতা shô -hô- jo -gi- ta "cooperation", where
534-539: A distinct unit in several inscriptions, including the 10th century Gaonri inscription of Vakpati Munja , the 10th century Nyayakandali of Sridhara-acharya, the 11th century Prabodha-Chandrodaya by Krishna Mishra, the 13th century Amareshvara temple inscription of Mandhata , and the 16th century Chandimangal by Mukundarama. The 11th century CE Tirumalai inscription of Rajendra Chola I also mentions "Ladam" (Uttara Rāḍha) and "Takkana-Ladam" (Dakṣina Rāḍha) as two distinct units. Rupendra K Chattopadhyaya theorizes that
623-672: A large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore , which borders Odisha , have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar , some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari , Kaithi and Tirhuta . In Sylhet and Bankura , modified versions of
712-660: A majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects. Even in SCB,
801-543: A part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali. Rarh region WB-30,WB-31,WB-32,WB-33,WB-34,WB-36,WB-37, WB-38,WB-39,WB-40,WB-41,WB-42,WB-44,WB-53, WB-54,WB-55,WB-56,WB-57,WB-WB-58,WB-67, Rarh region ( Bengali pronunciation: [raːɽʱ] ) is a toponym for an area in the Indian subcontinent that lies between
890-562: A rounded total of 280 million) worldwide. The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal , which comprises the present-day nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal . Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura , southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Bengali is also spoken in
979-498: A son of Mahāsenagupta. R D Banerji concluded that he was descended from the Magadha Guptas. Nagendranath Basu has argued that Shashanka was the son / descendant of Raja Karnadeva, who founded the city of Karnasubarna in Bengal. In some sources, Shashanka is described as a tribal leader of Bengal. Shashanka's name appears in multiple forms, including Śaśānka and Śaśānka-deva. The name is derived from Sanskrit , as another name for
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#17328491083851068-408: A special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্) , may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ [m] ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô , may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in
1157-575: A state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan . On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka ; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000. In 2010,
1246-463: A vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই [moj] "ladder" and in ইলিশ [iliʃ] "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি) . A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô , three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are
1335-494: Is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram , a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it
1424-468: Is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs , and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words . Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra . Since
1513-465: Is a fertile, low-lying alluvial tract. Rice, jute, legumes, oilseeds, wheat, barley, and mangoes are the chief crops in the east; extensive mulberry cultivation is carried out in the west. Rarh has several moist deciduous forests of Shorea robusta (sal), Magnolia champaca (champak) and Acacia . According to Rupendra Kr Chattopadhyay, the historical Rarh region cover parts of the following districts, divided into northern and southern Rarh by
1602-562: Is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America, the Middle East and other regions. Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fourth fastest growing language in India , following Hindi in the first place, Kashmiri in the second place, and Meitei ( Manipuri ), along with Gujarati , in
1691-400: Is an abugida , a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô ) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). It
1780-668: Is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka ( Sri Lanka Matha ) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore , while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala . After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone ,
1869-699: Is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects. During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata , a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District . There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use
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#17328491083851958-404: Is known as Apabhraṃśa , by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time. Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating. The local Apabhraṃśa of
2047-597: Is of the opinion that Mahasenagupta - already under pressure from the Maukharis (for failing to provide adequate protection) - wouldn't have knowingly appointed Shashanka to such an important position. Middleton (2015) argues in a similar vein that Shashanka served as maha samanta to a Gauda king, possibly Jayanaga . Whether Shashanka was a feudatory under the Maukharis or the Guptas is not known. By 605 C.E. following Mahasenagupta's death, Shashanka had established what became known as
2136-477: Is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme). Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs , combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable . Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/ , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. /e̯ i̯ o̯ u̯/ may all form the glide part of
2225-722: Is sometimes used for "snake" or "twig". Das further points out that the word "lāṛ" may itself be an Indo-Aryan loanword in Santali. " Gangaridai ", the name of an ancient Bengali people in Greek literature, is sometimes believed to be a Greek corruption of " Ganga -Rāḍha". However, according to D. C. Sircar , the word is simply the plural form of "Gangarid" (which is derived from the base "Ganga"), and means "Ganga (Ganges) people". Many aspect of Rarh are found in these books entitle as ' Subarnarekha hoite Mayurakshi and Rarher Mantrayan authored by Maniklal Sinha . Rarher Mantrayan contains
2314-405: Is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. It is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language . Bengali is the official , national , and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh , with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India . It
2403-672: Is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam . It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal , and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar , Arunachal Pradesh , Delhi , Chhattisgarh , Meghalaya , Mizoram , Nagaland , Odisha and Uttarakhand . Bengali
2492-500: The Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist . Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda , and Muhammad Enamul Haq . The Digital Revolution has also played
2581-606: The Arabic , Persian , and Turkic languages . The arrival of merchants and traders from the Middle East and Turkestan into the Buddhist -ruling Pala Empire , from as early as the 7th century, gave birth to Islamic influence in the region. In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including
2670-675: The Chota Nagpur Plateau on the West and the Ganges Delta on the East. Although the boundaries of the region have been defined differently according to various sources throughout history, it is mainly coextensive with the state of West Bengal , also comprising parts of the state of Jharkhand in India. The Rarh region historically has been known by many different names and has hosted numerous settlements throughout history. One theory identifies it with
2759-468: The Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 , made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of
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2848-564: The Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra . Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in c. 1869 . Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in
2937-701: The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire , and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, the vernacular of Bengal gained a lot of influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam , and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi . Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what
3026-520: The Nadia region . Bengali shows a high degree of diglossia , with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. Modern Bengali vocabulary is based on words inherited from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, along with tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and borrowings from Persian , Arabic , Austroasiatic languages and other languages with which it has historically been in contact. In
3115-691: The River Hooghly . The river Subarnarekha flows through some parts of the region in the Midnapur district . In the past, the floods of Damodar, called the "Sorrow of Bengal", often resulted in heavy losses to life and property. After the formation of the Damodar Valley Corporation in 1948, the flood hazard in the Rarh plain has been reduced through the construction of heavy embankments and other sophisticated engineering structures. West Rarh's Bagri river
3204-587: The Subbhabhumi and Vajjabhumi mentioned in the ancient Jain literature. The 17th century scholar Nilakanatha mentions Suhma as a synonym of Rāḍha. However, as Subbhabhumi is a corruption of Suhma, it appears that Suhma referred to only a part of the ancient Rāḍha region. A 6th century CE inscription of the Chola king Devendravarman is the earliest inscription to mention Uttara Rāḍha. The 12th century Belava copper inscription of Bhojavarman states that Bhatta Bhavadeva
3293-590: The University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh ) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature. The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla ) and India ( Jana Gana Mana ) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol"
3382-499: The boldface represents primary and secondary stress. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters ; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল skul (CCVC) "school". The Bengali-Assamese script
3471-557: The phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti , Chittagonian and Chakma , have contrastive tone ; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong
3560-608: The 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of
3649-637: The 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali: In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement . This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh ), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as
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3738-595: The 4th century. King Loka who was born in Vardhamāna ( Bardhamān ) is mentioned who must have ruled in the early 4th century CE. King Shashanka is often attributed with creating the first separate political entity in a unified Bengal called Gauda . He reigned in 7th century, and some historians place his rule approximately between 590 and 625. His capital was at Karnasubarna , 9.6 kilometres (6.0 mi) south-west of Baharampur , headquarters of Murshidabad district. The Chinese monk, Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang) travelled from
3827-576: The 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty . During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit Schwa . Slowly, the word-final ô disappeared from many words influenced by
3916-451: The Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar. Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where the letter forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra . The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example,
4005-426: The Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments , but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel , either [ɔ] as in মত [m ɔ t] "opinion" or [o] , as in মন [m o n] "mind", with variants like the more open [ɒ] . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it,
4094-534: The Bhāgirathi-Hooghly River in the west to the Padma River in the east. The legendary Sri Lankan chronicles Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa mention that Prince Vijaya , the founder of their nation, came from Simhapura city in the "Lala" country. This Lala is identified with Rāḍha. The earliest epigraphic evidence to Rāḍha probably appears in an inscription from Mathura . This inscription states that
4183-808: The Dakṣiṇa Rāḍha covered a large of part of West Bengal lying between the Ajay and Damodar rivers. This includes large parts of the later Bardhaman , Howrah , and Hughli , and Burdwan districts. The southern boundary of Dakṣiṇa Rāḍha may have extended to the Rupnarayan River , and its western boundary extended beyond the Damodar river into the present-day Arambag subdivision . The archaeological sites that formed part of Dakṣina Rāḍha include: Mahanad , Betur, Saptagram , Garh Mandaran, Bharatpur, Mangalkot , and possibly Dihar and Puskarana. Rarh presented human society
4272-556: The Damodar river: P. R. Sarkar defines the Rarh region as follows: The earliest reference to Rāḍha janapada (as "Ladha") is found in the Jain text Acharangasutra . The text states that the 6th century BCE spiritual leader Mahavira traveled in Vajjabhumi and Subbhabhumi , which were located in the Ladha country. It mentions that the region was "pathless and lawless" during this time, and
4361-481: The Gauda kingdom. From there, he issued gold coins to celebrate his triumph, and came to be addressed as Maharajadhiraja (king of great kings). According to some sources the city of Gauda was founded by King Shankaladeva. He, originally, was a native of Kannauj . In the book, History of Hindostan (originally translated from the book Gulshan-i-Ibrahimi written by Firishta ), it has been stated that Shankaladeva (Sinkol)
4450-806: The Kankagram bhukti . Based on these records, Rupendra K Chattopadhyaya believes that the Uttara Rāḍha included the western parts of the modern Murshidabad district , the entire Birbhum district , some parts of the Santal Parganas district , and the northern part of the Katwa subdivision of the Bardhaman district . The archaeological sites located in the historical Uttara Rāḍha region include Rajbadidanga, Gitagram, Paikor, Batikar, Bahiri , Kagas, Kotasur, and Vallala-rajar-dhibi (Ballal Dhipi). Dakṣina Rāḍha appears as
4539-547: The Managoli inscription of the Yadava king Jaitugi I distinguishes Lala (Rarh) from Gaula (Gauda). According to Jain writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Gauda included Lakshmanavati in present-day Malda district . The Pala emperors were referred to as Vangapati (Lord of Vanga) and Gaudesvara (Lord of Gauda). Sena kings also called themselves Gaudesvara. From then Gauda and Vanga seem to be interchangeable names for
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#17328491083854628-452: The Moon. Śaśānka-deva therefore loosely translates to "moon god". The Hindu god Shiva bears the epithet Shashankasekhara, meaning, "he who bears the moon". The Chinese monk Xuanzang 's writings, he is mentioned as She-Shang-Kia. He is also called Śaśānka Narendragupta, which initially lent credence to the claim that he was descended from the later Guptas. In Sinha's Dynastic History of Magadha,
4717-501: The Rarh region. However, other writers such as Plutarch , Curtius and Solinus , suggest that Gangaridai was located on the eastern banks of the Gangaridai river. Moreover, Pliny states that the Gangaridai occupied the entire region about the mouths of the Ganges. This suggests that the Gangaridai territory included the larger coastal region of present-day West Bangal and Bangladesh, from
4806-493: The Rarh region. The Bhuvaneshvara inscription of Bhatta Bhavadeva, a 12th-century minister, describes Rāḍha as "a waterless, dry and woody region". This description suits the western part of Bengal. The 16th century Digvijayaprakasha suggests that Rāḍha was located to the north of the Damodar River , and to the south of the Gauda region . The 13th century chronicle Tabaqat-i Nasiri by Minhaj-i-Siraj defines Rāḍh (Rāḍha) as
4895-425: The ancient manuscripts of tantra and mantra, raveling various villages, and mixing with 'Mantrayanis' in Rarh. Whereas, Subarnarekha hoite Mayurakshi is based on the tribal lifestyle, introducing various tribes, their festivals, clothing's, culture of Hazaribag, Singbhum, Manbhum, Dhalbhum Shikarbhum, Santal Pargana and Bankura that are situated in the basin of the river Subarnarekha. The author also discussed about
4984-536: The basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh ( Barisal , Chittagong , Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives . Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [ tɕɔ ] , ছ [ tɕʰɔ ] , জ [ dʑɔ ] correspond to eastern চ [tsɔ] , ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ] , জ [dzɔ~zɔ] . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on
5073-469: The consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in
5162-406: The country of Karnasubarna to a region in the present-day state of Orissa ruled by Shashanka. There is mention of Pundravardhana being part of Gauda in certain ancient records. Not much is known about the early life of Shashanka. Historian D K Ganguly is reported to have concluded that he was a native of Magadha. The same source reports that the historian Padmanath Bhattacharya took Shashanka to be
5251-455: The country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam . Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. In Pakistan , Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan . The Department of Bengali in
5340-587: The development of Dobhashi . Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah . Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic and Persian , which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on
5429-410: The east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam , composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet . After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan ; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement. In
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#17328491083855518-443: The eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (lit. 'meaningless sounds'), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages , the Bihari languages , and the Odia language . The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around
5607-451: The emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the language movement. Although Sanskrit has been spoken by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the 3rd century BC, the local Buddhist population spoke varieties of the Prakrit . These varieties are generally referred to as "eastern Magadhi Prakrit ", as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji , as
5696-466: The final ন in মন [m o n] or the medial ম in গামলা [ɡamla] ). A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent [ɔ] is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures . These allographs, called কার kar , are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example,
5785-487: The first philosopher Maharishi Kapila who was born near Jahlda. Maharishi Patanjali who systematised yoga was born in Patun village in Burdwan. Kashiram Das from Siddhi village in Burdwan made the Mahabharata in lucid language accessible to the people and Krittibas Ojha did the same with the Ramayana . 15th century Indian saint and social reformer Chaitanya Mahaprabhu , who is the chief proponent of vedantic philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda and Gaudiya Vaishnavism ,
5874-606: The government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali as an honorary official language in December 2002. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations . Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum . Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji grouped the dialects of Bengali language into four large clusters: Rarhi , Vangiya , Kamrupi and Varendri ; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects ( Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form
5963-499: The graph মি [mi] represents the consonant [m] followed by the vowel [i] , where [i] is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar ) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা [ma] , মী [mi] , মু [mu] , মূ [mu] , মৃ [mri] , মে [me~mɛ] , মৈ [moj] , মো [mo] and মৌ [mow] represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. In these consonant-vowel ligatures,
6052-412: The graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden. Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi –
6141-573: The landscape of those laces and the influence of Buddhism on the tribal religion. The Rarh region lies between the Chota Nagpur Plateau on the west and the chief flow of the Ganges river (which has been continuously changing) in the east. The Rarh plains comprise the lower Gangetic plains to the south of the Ganges, and to the west of its Bhagirathi-Hooghly distributary. These plains are formed of old alluvial deposits . The elevation ranges between 75 and 150 m. Low-level Pleistocene -era lateritic badlands (locally called khoai ) are common in
6230-413: The language as: While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However,
6319-429: The language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in
6408-496: The legendary Prince Vijaya came from a region called Lāla, which is identified with Rāḍha by several scholars. In a 1972 thesis, the researcher Amalendu Mitra traced the origin of the word Rarh to "lāṛ", the Santali word for snake . This theory was also endorsed by his mentor Panchanan Mandal. However, German Indologist Rahul Peter Das notes that this is highly unlikely: the Santali word "lāṛ" actually means string or fibre , and
6497-428: The letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra , as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e , also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô . The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between
6586-422: The local people treated Mahavira harshly. One theory identifies Rarh with the powerful Gangaridai people described in the ancient Greek literature. The Greek writer Diodorus Siculus mentions that the Ganges river formed the eastern boundary of the Gangaridai. Based on his statement and the identification of Ganges with Bhāgirathi-Hooghly (a western distributary of Ganges), Gangaridai can be identified with
6675-492: The names 'Śaśānka' and 'Soma' are used interchangeably. Some historians believe that Shashanka began his career as a feudatory chief (maha samanta ) under Mahasenagupta, of the Later Gupta Dynasty . And that after the death of Mahasenagupta, Shashanka drove the later Guptas and other prominent nobles out of the region and established his own kingdom with his capital at Karnasubarna . Other historians like Sailendra Nath Sen
6764-585: The neighbouring states of Odisha , Bihar , and Jharkhand , and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi , Mumbai , Thane , Varanasi , and Vrindavan . There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East , the United States , Singapore , Malaysia , Australia , Canada , the United Kingdom , and Italy . The 3rd article of
6853-514: The parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language . Approximate distribution of native Bengali speakers (assuming
6942-489: The powerful Gangaridai nation mentioned in the ancient Greco-Roman accounts. The Naihati copper plate inscription of King Ballal Sen names it as the ancestral settlement of the Sena dynasty . Rāḍha ( Sanskrit ) and Lāḍ[h]a ( Prakrit ) are the ancient names of the Rarh region. Other variations of the name that appear in the ancient Jain literature include Rarha, Lara, and Rara. The Sri Lankan Buddhist chronicles such as Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa state that
7031-605: The region. Several of these small hillocks were formed as a result of subaerial erosions and other tectonic movements. The highest of these are Biharinath (440 m) and Susunia (440 m). Biharinath contains sedimentary rocks of Gondwana system. Susunia contains gneissic and schistose rocks of Archean age, and also felspathic quartzite at its top. The major rivers in the region include Damodar , Ajay , Mayurakshi , Dwarakeswar , Shilabati (Shilai), and Kangsabati River (Kasai). All these rivers originate from Chota Nagpur Plateau and flows towards east or south-east finally to meet
7120-783: The section lying to the west of the Hoogly-Bhagirathi River . According to Rupendra K Chattopadhyaya of Banglapedia , Rāḍha "probably included a large part of the modern Indian state of West Bengal". According to historian André Wink, the Rāḍha division of the Pala-Sena era corresponds roughly to the modern Bardhaman district . The 9th–10th century literature and inscriptions and literature mention two divisions of Rāḍha: northern (Uttara) and southern (Dakṣiṇa). Rupendra K Chattopadhyaya (in Banglapedia ) believes that these roughly correspond to
7209-427: The so-called "inherent" vowel [ɔ] is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম [mɔ] . The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, allograph form (as discussed above). To represent
7298-536: The superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ) , denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ [tʃãd] "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in বাংলা [baŋla] "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative [h] (as in উঃ! [uh] "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ [dukʰːɔ] "sorrow"). The Bengali consonant clusters ( যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn ) are usually realised as ligatures, where
7387-635: The third place, according to the 2011 census of India . Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature , with its millennium-old literary history, was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to
7476-484: The visible matra and an invisible baseline). There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem. Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on
7565-435: The vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit ( tadbhava ), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example: The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels . The inventory
7654-590: The whole of Bengal. 24°11′N 88°16′E / 24.18°N 88.27°E / 24.18; 88.27 Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ), is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With over 237 million native speakers and another 41 million as second language speakers as of 2024, Bengali
7743-730: Was a native of Kannauj (Kinoge) and established the city of Gauda during the 8th century BC. Following his death, Shashanka was succeeded by his son, Manava , who ruled the kingdom for eight months. However Gauda was soon divided amongst Harshavardhana and Bhaskarvarmana of Kamarupa , the latter even managing to conquer Karnasuvarna. Evidence is inconsistent regarding links of Gauda with the Rarh region . While Krishna Mishra (11th or 12th century), in his Prabodha-chandrodaya , mentions that Gauda Rashtra includes Rarh (or Rarhpuri) and Bhurishreshthika, identified with Bhurshut , in Hooghly and Howrah districts,
7832-451: Was born in Nabadwip village of Nadia district . Others were born in Rarh or were by lineage from Rarh such as: Lochandas Thakur, Vrindavandas Thakur, Govindadas Thakur, Dvaja Chandidas, Dina Chandidas, Boru Chandidas , Ghanaram Chakravorty, Kavikankan Mukundaram Chakravorty, Bharatchandra Ray , Premendra Mitra , Sangeetacharya Kshetramohan Goswami, Sharatchandra , Tarashankar Bandopadhyay ,
7921-566: Was born in the Siddhala village (modern Siddhalagram) of Uttara Rāḍha. The 12th century Naihati inscription of Vallalasena also mentions a village named Vallahittaha in the Uttara-Rāḍha mandala (administrative unit). It suggests that Uttara Rāḍha was a part of the Vardhaman bhukti (province). However, the inscription of Vallalasena's successor Lakshmanasena states that this region was a part of
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