130-511: The Bengal Subah ( Bengali : সুবাহ বাংলা. Persian : صوبه بنگاله .), also referred to as Mughal Bengal , was the largest subdivision of Mughal India encompassing much of the Bengal region , which includes modern-day Bangladesh , the Indian state of West Bengal , and some parts of the present-day Indian states of Bihar , Jharkhand and Odisha between the 16th and 18th centuries. The state
260-1102: A base for the British East India Company , the French East India Company , the Danish East India Company , the Austrian East India Company , the Ostend Company , and the Dutch East India Company . The British company eventually rivaled the authority of the Nawabs. In the aftermath of the siege of Calcutta in 1756, in which the Nawab's forces overran the main British base, the East India Company dispatched
390-500: 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
520-596: 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
650-480: 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
780-550: A fleet led by Robert Clive who defeated the last independent Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Mir Jafar was installed as the puppet Nawab. His successor Mir Qasim attempted in vain to dislodge the British. The defeat of Nawab Mir Qasim of Bengal, Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula of Oudh , and Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II at the Battle of Buxar in 1764 paved the way for British expansion across India. The South Indian Kingdom of Mysore led by Tipu Sultan overtook
910-904: A group of seven Kayastha (in Assam, they are commonly known as the Kalita caste) and seven Brahmin families led by Candivara was transferred to Langamaguri, a few miles north of present-day Guwahati . During the harvesting season in Lengamaguri, the Bhutiyas attacked and looted the country and in one instance the Bhutiyas captured Rajadhara, the son of Candivara. Candivara chased the Bhutiyas as far as Daimara between Maguri (near Changsari town ) and Dewangiri (in Bhutan ), killed few of them and released his son from captivity. In next four or five years,
1040-692: 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
1170-624: A loyal following and received imperial patronage from the Mughal court in Delhi and the Nawabs of Bengal. A provincial Bengali style of Mughal painting flourished in Murshidabad during the 18th century. Scroll painting and ivory sculptures were also prevalent. Bengal's population is estimated to have been 30 million prior to the Great Bengal famine of 1770 , which reduced it by as much as
1300-525: A major silk-producing region of the world. The increased agricultural productivity led to lower food prices . In turn, this benefited the Indian textile industry . Compared to Britain, the price of grain was about one-half in South India and one-third in Bengal, in terms of silver coinage. This resulted in lower silver coin prices for Indian textiles, giving them a price advantage in global markets. In
1430-682: 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,
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#17327652836391560-661: A part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali. Baro-Bhuyan The Baro-Bhuyans (or Baro-Bhuyan Raj ; also Baro-Bhuians and Baro-Bhuiyans ) were confederacies of soldier-landowners in Assam and Bengal in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. They were predominantly Bengali Muslims . The confederacies consisted of loosely independent entities, each led by
1690-535: A princely state or autonomous province is comparable to the European title of Grand Duke . In the early 18th-century, the Nawab of Bengal was the de facto independent ruler of some part of Bengal and other parts were ruled by Bengal Rajas such as Bardhaman Raj , Cooch Behar State which constitute the modern-day sovereign country of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal . They are often referred to as
1820-641: A province, included revenue rights) to the Company and the office of the Nizamat of Bengal (highest office, administrative and judicial rights) in 1793. The Nawab of Bengal , who previously possessed both these offices, was now formally powerless and became a titular monarch. Bengal's physical features gave it such a fertile soil, and a favourable climate that it became a terminus of a continent-wide process of Turko-Mongol conquest and migration, informs Prof. Richard Eaton. The Mughal absorption of Bengal began during
1950-631: A reward, the Ahom king Suhungmung (1497–1539) settled these Bhuyans in Kalabari , Gohpur , Kalangpur and Narayanpur as tributary feudal lords. Over time, these Bhuyans grew very powerful but they were later subjugated by the Ahom king Jayadhwaj Singha . The Saru Baro Bhuyan is a branch of the Bar Baro Bhuyan that split and went west. By the mid 16th century, all the Adi Bhuyans power
2080-523: 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
2210-408: 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
2340-581: 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,
2470-536: A third. Bengal was an affluent province with Bengali Muslim as the official religion and constituted a significant minority following a Bengali Hindu majority. There was a significant influx of migrants from the Safavid Empire into Bengal during the Mughal period. Persian administrators and military commanders were enlisted by the Mughal government in Bengal. An Armenian community settled in Dhaka and
2600-463: 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
2730-701: A warrior chief or a landlord. The tradition of Baro-Bhuyan is peculiar to both Assam and Bengal. In Assam, this phenomenon came into prominence in the 13th century when they resisted the invasion of Ghiyasuddin Iwaj Shah and in Bengal when they resisted Mughal rule in the 16th century. Baro denotes the number twelve, but in general there were more than twelve chiefs or landlords, and the word baro meant many. Thus, Bhuyan-raj denoted individual Bhuyanship, whereas Baro-Bhuyan denoted temporary confederacies that they formed. In times of aggression by external powers, they generally cooperated in defending and expelling
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#17327652836392860-500: 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
2990-495: 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 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
3120-468: 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
3250-400: 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
3380-707: 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 ,
3510-666: 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
3640-404: 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
3770-524: Is needed before drawing any conclusions. Bengal had many traders and bankers. Among them was the Jagat Seth Family , who were the wealthiest bankers in the region. The Mughals launched a vast economic development project in the Bengal delta which transformed its demographic makeup. The government cleared vast swathes of forest in the fertile Bhati region to expand farmland. It encouraged settlers, including farmers and jagirdars , to populate
3900-666: Is often referred to as the Adi Bhuyan , or the progenitor Bhuyans. The Adi-charita written in the late 17th century is the only manuscript which mentions the Adi-Bhuyan group. However, Maheswar Neog has called the account as spurious or fabricated. Nevertheless, their presence is recorded in the Ahom Buranjis , where it is recorded that they were instrumental in ending the rule of the Kachari and Chutia kingdom. As
4030-490: 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
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4160-555: 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 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
4290-508: 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 is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America,
4420-534: The chauth of Bengal and Bihar to the Marathas, and the Marathas agreed not to invade Bengal again. The expeditions, led by Raghuji Bhonsle of Nagpur , also established de facto Maratha control over Orissa , which was formally incorporated in the Maratha Empire in 1752. The Nawab of Bengal also paid Rs. 3.2 million to the Marathas, towards the arrears of chauth for the preceding years. The chauth
4550-509: 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
4680-675: 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
4810-499: The Bargis (Maratha warriors) including textile weavers, silk winders, and mulberry cultivators causing widespread economic devastation for the proto-industrializing textile-based economy of Bengal. Many Bengalis were mutilated and contemporary accounts describe the scene of mass gang-rape against women. Alivardi Khan the Nawab of Bengal fearing even worse devastation and destruction agreed to pay Rs. 1.2 million of tribute annually as
4940-474: 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
5070-579: 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
5200-791: The Kantajew Temple (1704) and the temples of Bishnupur (1600–1729). An authentic Bengali art was reflected in the muslin fabric of Jamdani (meaning "flower" in Persian ). The making of Jamdani was pioneered by Persian weavers. The art passed to the hands of Bengali Muslim weavers known as juhulas . The artisan industry was historically based around the city of Dhaka. The city had over 80,000 weavers. Jamdanis traditionally employ geometric designs in floral shapes. Its motifs are often similar to those in Iranian textile art (buta motif) and Western textile art ( paisley ). Dhaka's jamdanis enjoyed
5330-849: The Khan Mohammad Mridha Mosque (1704). The city of Murshidabad also became a haven of Mughal architecture under the Nawabs of Bengal , with the Caravanserai Mosque (1723) being its most prominent monument. In rural hinterlands, the indigenous Bengali Islamic style continued to flourish, blended with Mughal elements. One of the finest examples of this style is the Atiya Mosque in Tangail (1609). Several masterpieces of terracotta Hindu temple architecture were also created during this period. Notable examples include
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5460-524: 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
5590-607: 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"
5720-499: 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
5850-557: 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
5980-471: The (Burmese) Kingdom of Arakan and reestablished Bengali control of the port city, which was renamed as Islamabad. The Chittagong Hill Tracts frontier region was made a tributary state of Mughal Bengal and a treaty was signed with the Chakma Circle in 1713. Between 1576 and 1717, Bengal was ruled by a Mughal Subahdar (imperial governor). Members of the imperial family were often appointed to
6110-615: The 12th century. Guha (1983) claims that the Baro-Bhuyan emerged in the 13th century from the fragmented remains of the Kamarupa chieftains. Nevertheless, not all local Kamarupa administrators ( samanta ) became Bhuyans and many were later-day migrant adventurers from North India. Though there exists many legendary accounts of the origin of the Baro Bhuyan these accounts are often vague and contradictory. This original group
6240-623: 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
6370-424: The 1790s, Bengal's industries retained some comparative advantages. Ray states that "Bengali entrepreneurs continued in industries such as cotton and silk textiles where there were domestic market supports", and major deindustrialisation occurred as late as the 1830s to 1850s. Bengal was a centre of the worldwide muslin , jute and silk trades. During this era, the most important center of jute and cotton production
6500-602: The 17th century, Bengal was an affluent province that was, according to economic historian Indrajit Ray, globally prominent in industries such as textile manufacturing and shipbuilding . Bengal's capital city of Dhaka was the empire's financial capital, with a population exceeding a million people, and with an estimated 80,000 skilled textile weavers. It was an exporter of silk and cotton textiles, steel, saltpeter , and agricultural and industrial produce. Bengal's mining, metallurgy, and shipping in this era have been described as proto-industrialization . Many historians have built on
6630-582: The 18th century, which further added to the decline of the Nawabs of Bengal. The Bengal Subah was met by a series of face to face confrontations by the Maratha Empire including the First Battle of Katwa , the Second Battle of Katwa , the Battle of Burdwan and the Battle of Rani Sarai where Nawab Alivardi Khan defeated the Marathas and repelled their attacks. The Maratha raids lasted a decade from 1741 to early 1751. The Marathas committed many atrocities across Bengal causing many to flee from West Bengal to East Bengal. 400,000 civilian Bengalis were massacred by
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#17327652836396760-487: 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
6890-421: 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
7020-473: The Baro-Bhuyans landlords, notably Isa Khan . Bengal was integrated into a powerful and prosperous empire; and shaped by imperial policies of pluralistic government. The Mughals built a new imperial metropolis in Dhaka from 1610, with well-developed fortifications, gardens, tombs, palaces and mosques. It served as the Mughal capital of Bengal for 75 years. The city was renamed in honour of Emperor Jahangir . The Mughal conquest of Chittagong in 1666 defeated
7150-401: 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,
7280-426: 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,
7410-453: The Candivara group later. In due course, members of these Bhuyans became powerful. Alauddin Husain Shah , who ended the Khen dynasty by displacing Nilambar in 1498, extended his rule up to the Barnadi river by defeating Harup Narayan who was a descendant of Gandharva-raya, a Bhuyan from the second group established by Durlabhnarayana at Bausi ( Chota raja of Bausi), among others. The Baro-Bhuyans retaliated and were instrumental in ending
7540-499: The Industrial Revolution. In the revenue settlement by Todar Mal in 1582, Bengal Subah was divided into 24 sarkars (districts), which included 19 sarkar s of Bengal proper and 5 sarkar s of Orissa . In 1607, during the reign of Jahangir Orissa became a separate Subah . These 19 sarkar s were further divided into 682 parganas . In 1658, subsequent to the revenue settlement by Shah Shuja , 15 new sarkar s and 361 new pargana s were added. In 1722, Murshid Quli Khan divided
7670-451: The Kachari kingdom in the east and the Kamata kingdom in the west on the south bank of the Brahmaputra River . According to Neog, the leader ( shiromani ) of the group, Chandivara, was originally a ruler of Kannauj , who had to flee due to Firuz Shah Tughlaq 's 1353 campaign against Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah and reached Gauda , the domain of Dharmanarayana. As a result of a treaty between Dharmanarayana and Durlabhnarayana of Kamata kingdom,
7800-437: The King at Mrauk U . Shaista Khan was an influential viceroy during the reign of Aurangazeb. He consolidated Mughal control of eastern Bengal. Prince Muhammad Azam Shah , who served as one of Bengal's viceroys, was installed on the Mughal throne for four months in 1707. Viceroy Ibrahim Khan II gave permits to English and French traders for commercial activities in Bengal. The last viceroy Prince Azim-us-Shan gave permits for
7930-520: 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 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,
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#17327652836398060-538: The Mughal Court to establish a hereditary principality in Bengal, with Khan being recognised in the official title of Nazim. He founded the Nasiri dynasty. In 1740, following the Battle of Giria , Alivardi Khan staged a coup and founded the short-lived Afsar dynasty. For all practical purposes, the Nazims acted as independent princes. European colonial powers referred to them as Nawabs or Nababs. Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ),
8190-412: The Mughal Court upgraded the prime minister's position to the hereditary Nawab of Bengal . Khan founded a new capital in Murshidabad . His descendants formed the Nasiri dynasty. Alivardi Khan founded a new dynasty in 1740. The Nawabs ruled over a territory which included Bengal proper, Bihar and Orissa . The Nawab of Bengal was the hereditary ruler of Bengal Subah in Mughal India . The Nawab of
8320-463: The Nawab of Bengal as the subcontinent's wealthiest monarchy; but this was short-lived and ended with the Anglo-Mysore War . The British then turned their sights on defeating the Marathas and Sikhs . The Nawabs of Bengal entered into treaties with numerous European colonial powers, including joint-stock companies representing Britain , Austria , Denmark , France and the Netherlands . The resurgent Maratha Empire launched raids against Bengal in
8450-403: The Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The nawabs were based in Murshidabad which was centrally located within Bengal. The nawabs continued to issue coins in the name of the Mughal Emperor. But for all practical purposes, the nawabs governed as independent monarchs. Under the early nawabs, Bengal became the financial backbone of the Mughal court, contributing more than half the funds that flowed into
8580-492: The Nawab's dominions, including Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. It gained the right to collect taxes on behalf of the Mughal Court after the Battle of Buxar in 1765. Bengal, Bihar and Orissa were made part of the Bengal Presidency and annexed into the British colonial empire in 1793. The Indian mutiny of 1857 formally ended the authority of the British East India Company, when the British Raj replaced Company rule in India . Other European powers also carved out small colonies on
8710-426: The aggressor. In times of peace, they maintained their respective sovereignty. In the presence of a strong king, they offered their allegiance. In general each of them were in control of a group of villages, called cakala , and the more powerful among them called themselves raja . The rulers of the Bhuyanships belonged to different ethnic, religious or social backgrounds. In 13th century Brahmaputra valley
8840-693: The appointed place for the receipt of revenue, as the division of grain between the government and the husbandman is not here customary. The harvests are always abundant, measurement is not insisted upon, and the revenue demands are determined by estimate of the crop. In contrast, the Baharistan says there were two collections per year, following the spring and autumn harvests. It also says that, at least in some areas, revenue demands were based on survey and land measurement. Bengali peasants were quick to adapt to profitable new crops between 1600 and 1650. Bengali peasants rapidly learned techniques of mulberry cultivation and sericulture , establishing Bengal Subah as
8970-536: 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
9100-409: The capital to Dhaka. In 1703, Murshid Quli Khan, then diwan (prime minister in charge of finance) of Bengal shifted his office from Dhaka to Maqsudabad and later renamed it Murshidabad . In 1656, Shah Shuja reorganised the sarkars and added Orissa to the Bengal Subah. The sarkars (districts) and the parganas/mahallahs ( tehsils ) of Bengal Subah were: Sarkars of Orissa: The state government
9230-427: The commercial capital of the empire. Chittagong was the largest seaport, with maritime trade routes connecting it to Arakan , Ayuthya , Aceh , Melaka , Johore , Bantam , Makassar , Ceylon , Bandar Abbas , Mocha and the Maldives . Parthasarathi estimates that grain wages for weaving and spinning in Bengal and Britain were comparable in the mid 18th century. However, due to the scarcity of data, more research
9360-469: 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
9490-455: 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
9620-644: The delta. It assigned Sufis as the chieftains of villages. Emperor Akbar re-adapted the modern Bengali calendar to improve harvests and tax collection. The region became the largest grain producer in the subcontinent. There are sparse accounts of the Bengal revenue administration in Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari and some in Mirza Nathan's Baharistan-i-Ghaibi . According to the former, The demands of each year are paid by instalments in eight months, they (the ryots) themselves bringing mohurs and rupees to
9750-604: 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
9880-646: 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
10010-553: 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
10140-591: The end of the Karrani Dynasty (1564–1575), the nobles of Bengal became fiercely independent. Sulaiman Khan Karrani carved out an independent principality in the Bhati region comprising a part of greater Dhaka district and parts of Mymensingh district . During that period Taj Khan Karrani and another Afghan chieftain helped Isa Khan to obtain an estate in Sonargaon and Mymensingh in 1564. By winning
10270-578: The establishment of the British East India Company 's Fort William in Calcutta, the French East India Company 's Fort Orleans in Chandernagore and the Dutch East India Company 's fort in Chinsura . During Azim-us-Shan's tenure, his prime minister Murshid Quli Khan emerged as a powerful figure in Bengal. Khan gained control of imperial finances. Azim-us-Shan was transferred to Bihar. In 1717,
10400-466: 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,
10530-605: The first Industrial Revolution , especially industrial textile manufacturing . In 1757 and 1764, the Company defeated the Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey and the Battle of Buxar , and Bengal came under British influence. It was deindustrialized after being conquered by the British East India Company . In 1765, Emperor Shah Alam II granted the office of the Diwani of Bengal (second-highest office in
10660-726: 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
10790-895: The grace of the Afghan chieftain, Isa Khan gradually increased his strength and status and by 1571, the Mughal Court designated him as the ruler of Bhati. Mughal histories, mainly the Akbarnama , the Ain-i-Akbari and the Baharistan-i-Ghaibi refers to the low-lying regions of Bengal as Bhati. This region includes the Bhagirathi to the Meghna River is Bhati, while others include Hijli, Jessore , Chandradwip and Barisal Division in Bhati. Keeping in view
10920-499: 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,
11050-412: 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 –
11180-454: The imperial treasury in Delhi. The Rajas of Bengal, Nawabs of Bengal oversaw a period of proto-industrialization . The Bengal-Bihar-Orissa triangle was a major production center for cotton muslin cloth, silk cloth, shipbuilding, gunpowder, saltpetre, and metalworks. Factories were set up in Murshidabad, Dhaka, Patna, Sonargaon, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Cossimbazar, Balasore, Pipeli, and Hugli among other cities, towns, and ports. The region became
11310-412: The king and his subjects—the members of which held central administrative offices, maintained economic and administrative links with in their own domain and propagated Indo-Aryan culture. This gave rise to the condition that individual domains were self-administered, economically self-sufficient and capable of surviving the fragmentation of central authority, when the Kamarupa kingdom finally collapsed in
11440-494: 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,
11570-523: 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 the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal
11700-547: 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
11830-428: 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
11960-551: The most prominent Baro-Bhuyan confederacy was led by Isa Khan of Sonargaon in the 16th century, which emerged during the disintegration of the Bengal Sultanate in the region, as a resistance to the Mughal expansion . They carved the land of Bhati and other areas of Bengal into twelve administrative units or Dwadas Bangla . The Baro-Bhuyans gradually succumbed to the Mughal dominance and eventually lost control during
12090-605: 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
12220-473: The original twelve Subahs (top-level provinces), bordering Bihar Subah and Orissa subah, as well as Burma . It took many years to overcome the resistance of ambitious and local chiefs. By a royal decree in November 1586, Akbar introduced uniform subah administration throughout the empire. However, in historian Tapan Raychaudhuri 's view, "the consolidation of Mughal power in Bengal and the pacification of
12350-517: 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
12480-535: The people of Lengamaguri finding that Bhutiyas were planning an attack in retaliation decided to hand over Candivara as the person responsible for the massacre of the Bhutiyas. The Bhutiyas chased Candivara as far as Rauta (in present-day Udalguri district ) but had to suffer defeat at the hands of the Baro-Bhuyans. Candivara and his group in search of a safe haven did not stay in Lengamaguri for long and moved soon to Bordowa in present-day Nagaon district with
12610-765: The perspective of R. C. Dutt who wrote, "The plunder of Bengal directly contributed to the Industrial Revolution in Britain." This analysis states that the capital amassed from Bengal was used to invest in British industries such as textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution and greatly increase British wealth, while at the same time leading to deindustrialization in Bengal. According to Indrajit Ray, domestic industries expanded for decades even after Plassey. Although colonial-based price manipulation and state discrimination initiated from
12740-529: The position. Viceroy Prince Shah Shuja was the son of Emperor Shah Jahan . During the struggle for succession with his brothers Prince Aurangazeb , Prince Dara Shikoh and Prince Murad Baksh , Prince Shuja proclaimed himself as the Mughal Emperor in Bengal. He was eventually defeated by the armies of Aurangazeb. Shuja fled to the Kingdom of Arakan, where he and his family were killed on the orders of
12870-575: The province really began in 1594". Many of the chiefs subjugated by the Mughals, some of the Baro-Bhuyans in particular, were upstarts who grabbed territories during the transition from Afghan to Mughal rule, but others, such as the Rajas of Chandradwip, Malla, and Shushang, were older families who had ruled independently from time immemorial. By the 17th century, the Mughals subdued opposition from
13000-667: The reign of Jahangir . Isa Khan was the leader of the Baro Bhuiyans (twelve landlords) and a zamindar of the Bhati region in medieval Bengal. Throughout his reign he put resistance against Mughal invasion. It was only after his death, when the region went totally under Mughals . The Jesuit mission who sent to Bengal managed to identify that 3 of the chieftains were Hindus, they were Ramchandra Basu of Chandradwip , Bakla (Barisal), Surendranath Sur of Present Southern West Bengal, and Pratapaditya of Chandechan, Jessore while
13130-399: The reign of emperor Jahangir , under the leadership of Islam Khan I , the governor of Bengal Subah . Epigraphic sources indicate that the Kamarupa state had entered a state of fragmentation in the 9th century when the tradition of granting away police, revenue and administrative rights to the donee of lands became common. This led to the creation of a class of landed intermediary between
13260-540: The reign of the first Mughal emperor Babur . In 1529, Babur defeated Sultan Nasiruddin Nasrat Shah of the Bengal Sultanate during the Battle of Ghaghra . Babur later annexed parts of Bengal. His son and successor Humayun occupied the Bengali capital Gaur , where he stayed for six months. Humayun was later forced to seek in refuge in Persia because of Sher Shah Suri 's conquests. Sher Shah Suri briefly interrupted
13390-466: The reigns of both the Mughals and the Bengal Sultans. The Mughal conquest of Bengal began with the victory of Akbar's army over Sultan of Bengal Daud Khan Karrani , the independent ruler of the province, at the Battle of Tukaroi on 3 March 1575. After the final defeat of Daud Karrani at the Battle of Rajmahal the following year, Mughal Emperor Akbar announced the creation of Bengal as one of
13520-944: The rule of Alauddin Husain Shah via his son Shahzada Danyal . But very soon, the rise of Biswa Singha of the Koch dynasty in Kamata destroyed their hold in Kamrup and squeezed those in the Nagaon region against the Kacharis to their east. They had to relocate to the north bank of the Brahmaputra in the first quarter of the 16th century, to a region west of the Bor Baro-Bhuyan group. The increasing Koch and Ahom conflicts further ate away at their independence and sovereignty. At
13650-427: 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
13780-565: The south bank of the Brahmaputra river , and west of the Chutiya kingdom in the north bank. These included areas of Nagaon , Darrang and Sonitpur districts. Subsequently, the Baro Bhuyan rules ended in the 16th century as they were squeezed between the Kachari kingdom and the Kamata kingdom in the west and were slowly overpowered by the expanding Ahom kingdom in the east. In Bengal,
13910-536: 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
14040-672: The support of Durlabhnarayana. Among the descendants of Candivara was Srimanta Sankardeva . After the death of Candivara, Rajadhara became the Baro-Bhuyan. During the late 14th century, Gadadhara Bar-bhuya, the younger brother of Rajadhara in order to increase his influence collected an army in Bordowa and attacked the Chutiyas and Khamtis but was held captive, he was later set free and had to settle in Makhibaha (in present-day Nalbari district ). A second group of five Bhuyans joined
14170-515: The system of Baro-Bhuyan Raj (confederacy) was formed from the petty chieftains—the remaining fragments of the erstwhile Kamarupa state. They often resisted foreign invasions (Ghiyasuddin Iwaj Shah in the 13th century), removed foreign rule ( Hussain Shah in the 16th century) and sometimes usurped state power ( Arimatta in the 14th century). They occupied the region west of the Kachari kingdom in
14300-486: The territories up to Subansiri River in 1563 AD. This group was finally subjugated by Prataap Singha in 1623, who relocated them to the south bank of the Brahmaputra. The Saru Bhuyans, who had moved west after the conflict with the Bor Baro-Bhuyans trace the genealogy of Candivara to Kanvajara, the eldest son of Sumanta, but this is not given credence. The later Baro-Bhuyans had ensconced themselves between
14430-781: The territory of Bengal, including the Dutch East India Company's Dutch Bengal settlements, the French colonial settlement in Chandernagore , the Danish colonial settlement in Serampore and the Habsburg monarchy Ostend Company settlement in Bankipur . According to João de Barros , Bengal enjoyed military supremacy over Arakan and Tripura due to good artillery . Its forces possessed notable large cannons . It
14560-704: The theatre of warfare between the Baro-Bhuiyans and the Mughals, the Baharistan-i-Ghaibi mentions the limits of the area bounded by the Ichamati River in the west, the Ganges in the south, the Tripura to the east; Alapsingh pargana (in present Mymensingh District ) and Baniachang (in greater Sylhet ) in the north. The Baro-Bhuiyans rose to power in this region and put up resistance to the Mughals, until Islam Khan Chisti made them submit in
14690-582: The title of Jagirdar . The Qadi title was reserved for the chief judge. Mansabdars were leaders of the Mughal Army, while faujdars were generals. The Mughals were credited for secular pluralism during the reign of Akbar , who promoted the religious doctrine of Din-i Ilahi . Later rulers promoted more conservative Islam. In 1717, the Mughal government replaced Viceroy Azim-us-Shan due to conflicts with his influential deputy viceroy and prime minister Murshid Quli Khan . Growing regional autonomy caused
14820-484: 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
14950-435: 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
15080-509: The whole Subah into 13 chakalah s, which were further divided into 1660 pargana s. Initially the capital of the Subah was Tanda . On 9 November 1595, the foundations of a new capital were laid at Rajmahal by Man Singh I who renamed it Akbarnagar. In 1610 the capital was shifted from Rajmahal to Dhaka and it was renamed Jahangirnagar. In 1639, Shah Shuja again shifted the capital to Rajmahal. In 1660, Muazzam Khan (Mir Jumla) again shifted
15210-476: Was Bengal, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka, leading to muslin being called "daka" in distant markets such as Central Asia. Domestically, much of India depended on Bengali products such as rice, silks and cotton textiles. Overseas, Europeans depended on Bengali products such as cotton textiles, silks and opium; Bengal accounted for 40% of Dutch imports from Asia, for example, including more than 50% of textiles and around 80% of silks. From Bengal, saltpetre
15340-568: 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
15470-401: Was also a major exporter of gunpowder and saltpeter to Europe. The Mughal Army built fortifications across the region, including Idrakpur Fort , Sonakanda Fort , Hajiganj Fort , Lalbagh Fort and Jangalbari Fort . The Mughals expelled Arakanese and Portuguese pirates from the northeastern coastline of the Bay of Bengal . Throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, Bengal
15600-776: Was also shipped to Europe, opium was sold in Indonesia , raw silk was exported to Japan and the Netherlands, and cotton and silk textiles were exported to Europe, Indonesia and Japan. The jute trade was also a significant factor. Bengal had a large shipbuilding industry. Indrajit Ray estimates shipbuilding output of Bengal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at 223,250 tons annually, compared with 23,061 tons produced in nineteen colonies in North America from 1769 to 1771. He also assesses ship repairing as very advanced in Bengal. An important innovation in shipbuilding
15730-621: Was an elaborately designed complex of gardens, fountains , a mosque, a tomb, an audience hall (Diwan-i-Khas) and a walled enclosure with gates. The Great Caravanserai and Shaista Khan Caravanserai in Dhaka were centres of commercial activities. Other monuments in the city include the Dhanmondi Shahi Eidgah (1640), the Sat Gambuj Mosque ( c. 1664 –76), the Shahbaz Khan Mosque (1679) and
15860-620: Was crushed, and they remained satisfied with what service they could render to the Ahom state as Baruwas or Phukans , Tamulis or Pachanis. During the first expedition of Chilarai against the Ahom kingdom, they aligned with the Ahoms (which Chilarai lost), but during the second expedition they aligned with the Koches (which Chilarai won). Chilarai appointed Uzir Bamun, Tapashi Laskar and Malamulya Laskar as Rajkhowas in Uttarkula after he annexed
15990-468: Was established following the dissolution of the Bengal Sultanate , a major trading nation in the world, when the region was absorbed into the Mughal Empire. Bengal was the wealthiest region in the Indian subcontinent. Bengal Subah has been variously described the "Paradise of Nations" and the "Golden Age of Bengal". It alone accounted for 40% of Dutch imports from Asia. The eastern part of Bengal
16120-616: 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 the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of
16250-567: Was globally prominent in industries such as textile manufacturing and shipbuilding , and it was a major exporter of silk and cotton textiles, steel, saltpeter , and agricultural and industrial produce in the world. The region was also the basis of the Anglo-Bengal War. By the 18th century, Bengal emerged as a semi-independent state, under the rule of the Nawabs of Bengal, who acted on Mughal sovereignty. It started to undergo proto-industrialization , making significant contributions to
16380-477: Was headed by a Viceroy ( Subedar Nizam ) appointed by the Mughal Emperor between 1576 and 1717. The Viceroy exercised tremendous authority, with his own cabinet and four prime ministers ( Diwan ). The three deputy viceroys for Bengal proper, Bihar and Orissa were known as the Naib Nazims . An extensive landed aristocracy was established by the Mughals in Bengal. The aristocracy was responsible for taxation and revenue collection. Land holders were bestowed with
16510-426: Was involved in the city's textile trade, paying a 3.5% tax. The Bengal Subah had the largest regional economy in that period. It was described as the paradise of nations . The region exported grains, fine cotton muslin and silk, liquors and wines, salt, ornaments, fruits, and metals. European companies set up numerous trading posts in Bengal during the 17th and 18th centuries. Dhaka was the largest city in Bengal and
16640-446: Was notable for its navy and shipbuilding . The following table covers a list of notable military engagements by Mughal Bengal: Battle of Giria Mughal architecture proliferated Bengal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, with the earliest example being the Kherua Mosque in Bogra (1582). They replaced the earlier sultanate-style of architecture. It was in Dhaka that the imperial style was most lavishly indulged in. Its Lalbagh Fort
16770-448: Was paid annually by the Nawab of Bengal to the Marathas up to 1758, until the British occupation of Bengal . By the late-18th century, the British East India Company emerged as the foremost military power in the region, defeating the French-allied Siraj-ud-Daulah at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, that was largely brought about by the betrayal of the Nawab's once trusted general Mir Jafar . The company gained administrative control over
16900-446: Was the introduction of a flushed deck design in Bengal rice ships, resulting in hulls that were stronger and less prone to leak than the structurally weak hulls of traditional European ships built with a stepped deck design. The British East India Company later duplicated the flushed deck and hull designs of Bengal rice ships in the 1760s, leading to significant improvements in seaworthiness and navigation for European ships during
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