99-623: 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
198-647: A Rajaguru , poets, learned men and physicians. Different epigraphic records mention different officials of the palace: Mahavaradhipati , Mahapratihara , Mahallakapraudhika , etc. Council of Ministers : The king was advised by a council of ministers ( Mantriparisada ), and Xuanzang mentions a meeting Bhaskaravarman had with his ministers. According to the Kamauli grant, these positions were filled by Brahmanas and were hereditary. State functions were specialised and there were different groups of officers looking after different departments. Revenue : Land revenue ( kara )
297-500: 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
396-596: 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
495-480: 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
594-692: 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
693-682: 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,
792-560: A member of an aboriginal group called Mlechchha.This dynasty too drew its lineage from the Naraka dynasty , though it had no dynastic relationship with the previous Varman dynasty . The capital of this dynasty was Haruppeshvara, now identified with modern Dah Parbatiya near Tezpur . The kingdom took on feudal characteristics with political power shared between the king and second and third tier rulers called mahasamanta and samanta who enjoyed considerable autonomy. The last ruler in this line
891-577: A part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali. Kamarupa Kamarupa ( / ˈ k ɑː m ə ˌ r uː p ə / ; also called Pragjyotisha or Pragjyotisha-Kamarupa ), an early state during the Classical period on the Indian subcontinent , was (along with Davaka ) the first historical kingdom of Assam . The Kamrupa word first appeared in
990-722: A result of a system of alliances that pitted the Kamarupa kings (allied to the Maukharis ) against the Gaur kings of Bengal (allied with the East Malwa kings). Susthitavarman died as the Gaur invasion was on, and his two sons, Suprathisthitavarman and Bhaskarvarman fought against an elephant force and were captured and taken to Gaur. They were able to regain their kingdom due probably to a promise of allegiance. Suprathisthitavarman's reign
1089-576: 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
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#17327731721911188-505: 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
1287-408: 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
1386-581: 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,
1485-463: 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
1584-500: 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
1683-468: 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
1782-572: 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
1881-400: 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
1980-707: 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 ,
2079-721: 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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#17327731721912178-526: Is given as 595–600, a very short period, at the end of which he died without an heir. Supratisthitavarman was succeeded by his brother, Bhaskarvarman (600–650), the most illustrious of the Varman kings who succeeded in turning his kingdom and invading the very kingdom that had taken him captive. Bhaskarvarman had become strong enough to offer his alliance with Harshavardhana just as the Thanesar king ascended
2277-404: 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
2376-505: Is not understood to have been a homogeneous unified entity. The Kalika Purana mentions a second eastern limit at Lalitakanta near Guwahati . Shin (2018) interprets this to mean that within Kamarupa the region between Karatoya and Lalitakanta was where sedentary life was the norm and the eastern region was the realm of non-sedentary society. These internal divisions came to be understood in terms of pitha s, which were abodes of goddesses. Various epigraphic records found scattered over
2475-497: Is now West Bengal , Bihar and Sylhet . Though the historical kingdom disappeared by the 12th century to be replaced by smaller political entities, the notion of Kamarupa persisted and ancient and medieval chroniclers continued to call a part of this kingdom Kamrup . In the 16th century the Ahom kingdom came into prominence and assumed for themselves the legacy of the ancient Kamarupa kingdom and aspired to extend their kingdom to
2574-606: 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
2673-490: 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
2772-405: 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
2871-686: 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
2970-509: 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
3069-615: 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
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3168-642: The Chutiya kingdom (east) were emerging. The Ahoms , who would establish a strong and independent kingdom later, began building their state structures in the region between the Kachari and the Chutiya kingdoms in 1228. Alauddin Hussain Shah issued coins in his name to be "Conqueror of Kamarup and Kamata". The extent of state structures can be culled from the numerous Kamarupa inscriptions left behind by
3267-474: 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
3366-579: 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
3465-463: The Karatoya River . The earliest use of the name Kamarupa to denote the kingdom is from the 4th century , when Samudragupta 's pillar inscription mentions it as a frontier kingdom. Kamarupa finds no mention in the epics Mahabharata or Ramayana and in the early and late Vedic, Buddhist, and Jain literatures the references to Kamarupa are not about a kingdom. An explanation of
3564-723: 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
3663-524: 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
3762-550: The Samudragupta Allahabad Edict before that there is no mention of existence of this word. Though Kamarupa prevailed from 350 to 1140 CE, Davaka was absorbed by Kamarupa in the 5th century CE. Ruled by three dynasties from their capitals in present-day Guwahati , North Guwahati and Tezpur , Kamarupa at its height covered the entire Brahmaputra Valley , parts of North Bengal , Bhutan and northern part of Bangladesh , and at times portions of what
3861-607: 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"
3960-499: 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
4059-557: 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
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4158-623: 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
4257-652: 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
4356-595: 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
4455-593: 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
4554-456: 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,
4653-426: 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,
4752-485: 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)
4851-465: The Kamarupa kings as well as accounts left by travellers such as those from Xuanzang. Governance followed the classical saptanga structure of state. Kings and courts : The king was considered to be of divine origin. Succession was primogeniture, but two major breaks resulted in different dynasties. In the second, the high officials of the state elected a king, Brahmapala, after the previous king died without leaving an heir. The royal court consisted of
4950-556: 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
5049-456: 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,
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#17327731721915148-503: The Nidhanpur copper-plate inscription from his victory camp in the Gaur capital Karnasuvarna (present-day Murshidabad , West Bengal ) to replace a grant issued earlier by Bhutivarman for a settlement in the Sylhet region of present-day Bangladesh. After Bhaskaravarman's death without an heir and a period of civil and political strife the kingdom passed into the hands of Salasthambha (655–670), possibly as erstwhile local governor and
5247-536: 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
5346-469: 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
5445-406: 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
5544-455: 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
5643-604: 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
5742-622: The east of Kamarupa in the Kapili river valley in present-day Nagaon district , but which is never mentioned again as an independent political entity in later historical records. Kamarupa, which was probably one among many such state structures, grew territorially to encompass the entire Brahmaputra valley and beyond. As the Gupta Empire weakened, the Varmans, of indigenous origin, began asserting themselves politically by performing horse sacrifices and culturally by claiming semi-divine origins. Under
5841-700: 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
5940-553: 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
6039-526: The economic activity of a tribal belt, and they do not mention any state . The earliest mention of a kingdom comes from the 4th-century Allahabad inscription of Samudragupta that calls the kings of Kamarupa and Davaka frontier rulers ( pratyanta nripati ). The corpus of Kamarupa inscriptions left by the rulers of Kamarupa at various places in Assam and present-day Bangladesh are important sources of information. Nevertheless, local grants completely eschew
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#17327731721916138-557: 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
6237-418: The epics and traced his dynastic lineage to Bhagadatta and Naraka . In the 9th century, Pragjyotishpura is named as the legendary city from which Naraka reigned after his conquest of Kamarupa . Kamarupa is not included in the list of sixteen Mahajanapadas from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE; nor does it or the northeast Indian region find any mention in the Ashokan records (3rd century BCE) —it
6336-466: 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,
6435-457: The first major assault from the west. Though it is unclear what the effect of this invasion was on the kingdom; that Bhutivarman's grandson, Sthitavarman (566–590), enjoyed victories over the Gauda Kingdom of Karnasuvarna and performed two aswamedha ceremonies suggests that the Kamarupa kingdom had recovered nearly in full. His son, Susthitavarman (590–600) came under the attack of Mahasenagupta of East Malwa. These back and forth invasions were
6534-606: 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
6633-445: The grantee the right to collect revenue and the right to be free of any regular tax himself and immunity from other harassments. Sometimes, the Brahmanas were relocated from North India, with a view to establish varnashramdharma . Nevertheless, the existence of donees indicate the existence of a feudal class. Grants made to temples and religious institutions were called dharmottara and devottara respectively. Land survey : The land
6732-499: 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,
6831-412: 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 –
6930-479: The help of the spring floods that same year, captured and killed the Sultan. Subsequent to this attack, Sandhya moved his capital from Kamarupanagara to Kamatapur (present day Gosanimari ) and established a new kingdom, that came to be called Kamata . At that time, western Kamarupa was the domain of the Koch and Mech peoples. In other parts of the erstwhile Kamarupa the Kachari kingdom (central Assam, South bank), Baro Bhuyans (central Assam, North bank), and
7029-413: 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,
7128-547: 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
7227-428: 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
7326-469: The name Kamarupa emerged first in the 10th-century Kalika Purana , six centuries after the first use of the name, as the kingdom where Kamadeva ( Kama ) regained his form ( rupa ). The name Pragjyotisha , on the other hand, is mentioned in the epics, but it did not become associated with the Kamarupa kingdom till the 7th century when Bhaskaravarman associated his kingdom with the Pragjyotisha of
7425-598: The name Kamarupa; instead they use the name Pragjyotisha, with the kings called Pragjyotishadhipati . The fragmentary Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscription , written in Sanskrit and probably a land grant, is dated to approximately the 5th century. It was found in Sarupathar in the Golaghat district of Assam. It supports the idea that Sanskritisation spread to the east very quickly. While this dating coincides with
7524-501: 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
7623-605: 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
7722-517: 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
7821-472: The region may have begun before the second century. Over the course of its prevalence, the boundaries of Kamarupa had fluctuated. Nevertheless, the traditional boundary of Kamarupa is held by scholars to be— Karatoya river in the west, Sadiya in the east, between the Dhaka and Mymensingh districts in Bangladesh in the south, and Kanchenjanga in the north. The traditional boundaries are drawn from
7920-433: The region of Chandrapuri visaya , identified with present-day Sylhet division . Thus, the small but powerful kingdom that Pushyavarman established grew in fits and starts over many generations of kings and expanded to include adjoining possibly smaller kingdoms and parts of Bangladesh. After the initial expansion till the beginning of Bhutivarman's reign, the kingdom came under attack from Yasodharman (525–535) of Malwa ,
8019-462: The regions are used to postulate the size of the kingdom. The kingdom is believed to have broken up entirely by the 13th century into smaller kingdoms Kamarupa, first mentioned on Samudragupta 's Allahabad rock pillar as a frontier kingdom, began as a subordinate but sovereign ally of the Gupta empire around present-day Guwahati in the 4th century: It finds mention along with Davaka, a kingdom to
8118-631: The rule of Bhaskaravarman Kamarupa reached its political zenith and the lineage of the Varmans from Narakasura , a demon, became a fixed tradition. The Mlechchha dynasty , another set of indigenous rulers and the Pala dynasty (Kamarupa) that followed, too asserted political legitimacy by asserting descendancy from Narakasura. Pushyavarman (350–374) established the Varman Dynasty, by fighting many enemies from within and without his kingdom; but his son Samudravarman (374–398), named after Samudragupta,
8217-649: The second half of the first millennium BCE. Early dated mentions come from the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century) and Ptolemy 's Geographia (2nd century) which call the region Kirrhadia after the Kirata population. Arthashastra (early centuries of the Christian era ) mentions "Lauhitya", which is identified with Brahmaputra valley by a later commentator. These early references speak about
8316-427: 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
8415-536: 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
8514-468: The textual references two of which are contemporneous— Xuanzang (7th century), and Kalika Purana (10th century)—and a late medieval source Yogini Tantra (16th century) though none of these claims are backed by any inscriptional record. Thus based on these references Kamarupa is considered to span the entire Brahmaputra valley and Northeast India and at various times thought to include parts of present-day Bhutan , Bangladesh and Nepal . Kamarupa
8613-654: 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
8712-427: The throne in 606 after the murder of his brother, the previous king, by Shashanka of Gaur. Harshavardhana finally took control over the kingless Maukhari kingdom and moved his capital to Kanauj. The alliance between Harshavardhana and Bhaskarvarman squeezed Shashanka from either side and reduced his kingdom, though it is unclear whether this alliance resulted in his complete defeat. Nevertheless, Bhaskarvarman did issue
8811-533: The time-span of the Varman dynasty, the inscription does not identify the state formation that issued the grant; the Varman dynasty may not have been responsible. One cannot completely "rule out the possibility of several simultaneous political powers in different sub-regional levels of north-eastern India around or even before the fourth century." Indeed, archaeological discoveries in the Doiyang Dhansiri Valley suggests that early state formation in
8910-484: 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
9009-435: 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
9108-549: 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
9207-645: Was Jaya Pala (1075–1100). Around this time, Kamarupa was attacked and the western portion was conquered by the Pala king Ramapala . From among the local rulers, there emerged a strong ruler named Sandhya ( c. 1250 –1270), the Rai of Kamrup , with his capital at Kamarupanagara, the seat of the last Pala kings. Malik Ikhtiyaruddin Iuzbak , a governor of Gaur for the Mamluk rulers of Delhi , attempted an invasive attack on Sandhya's domain in 1257; and Sandhya, with
9306-630: Was Tyāga Singha (890–900). After the death of Tyāgasimha without an heir, a member of the Bhauma family, Brahma Pala (900–920), was elected as king by the ruling chieftains, just as Gopala of the Pala Empire of Bengal was elected. The original capital of this dynasty was Hadapeshvara, and was shifted to Durjaya built by Ratna Pala (920–960), near modern Guwahati . The greatest of the Pala kings, Dharma Pala (1035–1060) had his capital at Kamarupanagara, now identified with North Guwahati. The last Pala king
9405-739: 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,
9504-489: Was accepted as an overlord by many local rulers. Nevertheless, subsequent kings continued their attempts to stabilise and expand the kingdom. Kalyanavarman (422–446) occupied Davaka and Mahendravarman (470–494) further eastern areas. Narayanavarma (494–518) and his son Bhutivarman (518–542) offered the ashwamedha ( horse sacrifice ); and as the Nidhanpur inscription of Bhaskarvarman avers, these expansions included
9603-598: Was collected by special tax-collectors from cultivators. Cultivators who had no proprietary rights on the lands they tilled paid uparikara . Duties ( sulka ) were collected by toll collectors ( Kaibarta ) from merchants who plied keeled boats. The state maintained a monopoly on copper mines ( kamalakara ). The state maintained its stores and treasury via officials: Bhandagaradhikrita and Koshthagarika . Grants : The king occasionally gave Brahmanas grants ( brahmadeya ), which consisted generally of villages, water resources, wastelands etc. ( agraharas ). Such grants conferred on
9702-523: Was not part of the Mauryan Empire . The 3rd-2nd century BCE Baudhayana Dharmasutra mentions Anga (eastern Bihar), Magadha (southern Bihar), Pundra (northern Bengal) and Vanga (southern Bengal), and that a Brahmin required purification after visiting these places —but it does not mention Kamarupa, thereby indicating it was beyond the ambit and recognition of the Brahminical culture in
9801-685: Was surveyed and classified. Arable lands ( kshetra ) were held individually or by families, whereas wastelands ( khila ) and forests were held collectively. There were lands called bhucchidranyaya that were left unsurveyed by the state on which no tax was levied. Administration : The entire kingdom was divided into a hierarchy of administrative divisions. From the highest to the lowest, they were bhukti , mandala , vishaya , pura (towns), agrahara (collection of villages) and grama (village). These units were administered by headed by rajanya , rajavallabha , vishayapati etc. Some other offices were nyayakaranika , vyavaharika , kayastha etc., led by
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