HISTORY OF BENGALI

HISTORY OF BENGALI

Sanjeev Nayyar

PART - 1

I was not proposing to compile this piece till I read an article by one Sauvik Chakraborthi in today’s Economic Times where he writes about feeling closer to Bengali Muslims / Bangladeshis rather than Punjabis. I agree that Punjabis do not eat fish like the Bengalis do but do you know that Baisakhi and Boishakh festivals are celebrated on the same day in Punjab and Bengal respectively. Further Punjabi and Bengali have originated from Indo Aryan forms of speech. Urdu too originated in India but has more words of Persian Arabic than Hindi today. When I use the word Aryan it does not mean that I subscribe to the Aryan Invasion Theory but as Sri Aurobindo said Aryan means Arya or cultured.

This article is virtually verbatim from The History and Culture of the Indian People published by the Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan. After that I compared notes with The Cultural Heritage of India by the Ramakrishna Mission and made additions.

It is said by some Muslim scholars that development of Bengali literature was rendered possible only after the enlightened rule of Hussain Shah, the Sultan of Bengal, whose rule ended in 1519. Quote Shri R C Mazumdar editor of the Bhavan book ‘After a careful study of the materials now available, I feel that Hussain Shah has no reasonable claims to be regarded as the promoter of Bengali literature”.

Origin  - The three Bihari speeches of eastern India namely Maithili, Magahi and Bhojpuri and Oriya, Bengali – Assamese all originated from the Magadhi Prakrit. By 1000 A.D. judging from the specimens of Bengali, Assamese and Oriya, these languages had become fully established although the relationship between Bengali (B) and Oriya was a little closer than between these two and Oriya. About this time Bengali was fully characterized while Assamese remained much closer to Old B.

The article is divided into two chapters covering periods –

1. 1000 to 1818

2. 1818 to 1947

1000 to 1300 A.D.

The oldest specimens of B are to be found in place and personal names in early inscriptions of B from the 5th century down to 1000 a.d. Connected specimens of B literature are found in the fifty Charyapadas which were discovered in Nepal. Shashtri its founder published these in old B along with specimens of Apabhramsa (Sauraseni or Western Apabhramsa – Incidentally Punjabi derived out of a Sauraseni Apabhramsa around 1300 a.d.) literature obtained from Nepal. The 47 songs found in this work alone have a claim to be regarded as old B while the rest of the work is in Western Apabhramsa. These poems relate to the ideas and practices of the Vajrayana School of late Mahayana Buddhism of Eastern India.

The poems were composed by a class of religious teachers known as Siddhas. They were claimed by both the later Mahayana Buddhists of India and Tibet as well as by the followers of Saiva Sect of Goraksha-natha. (Some of you might be surprised to see the connection between the Tibetans and the Saiva sect but having visited Mount Kailash I found that Tibetans worship Lord Shiva with greater fervor than we do). Of the 84 Siddhas some 24 are represented in the Charyapadas. They composed short lyrics of generally five couplets in a metre, which is commonly the Padakulaka metre from which the modern Hindi chaupa and the B Payar evolved. The style and technique was continued in Bhojpuri, B and Western Hindi poetry and this school which is represented in the Charyapada songs also has something to do with the medieval North Indian Sant poets and reformers.

The Charyapada poems have also been claimed as belonging to Oriya, Assamese and Maithili. All these go to show that 1000 years ago these various eastern speeches converged into a common basic type of speech – a kind of Magadhi Apabhramsa with local variations.

The main values of the Charyapadas are linguistic and doctrinal. The main characteristic is their religious and emotional appeal, which found a later development in later B literature in Sahajiya songs, Vaishnava padas. The date these were composed is between 950 to 1200 A.D. when most of the new languages like Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati were taking shape.

Other specimens of B literature prior to 1300 a.d. are to be found in a few verses in Prakritapaingala (1400 a.d.). The poems give us a specimen of literature in the Brahmanical tradition as the Charyapadas give us the Buddhist Vajrayana tradition. Poets in Bengal before 1300 a.d. used not only Bengali but also Western Apabhramsa (a type of Khariboli Hindi of a thousand years ago) in addition to Sanskrit.

The old B literature in the compositions of the Siddhas exerted influence on North India too. Gorakh-nath the great Sant of North Inndia and founder of the Kanphata Yogis of Punjab is closely connected with the Siddhas of Bengal. In certain works attributed to Gorakh-nath and his disciples like the Gorakh-Bodh we have specimens of poems in Old Bengali but masquerading as a form of Old Hindi. Ancient Bengal can have said to have influenced North India through her Charyapda literature. Although I must say that the influence was both ways as has been brought out in the earlier paras.

(To be continued)