64-507: Sylheti Nagri or Sylheti Nāgarī ( Sylheti : ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ , síloṭi nagri , pronounced [sílɔʈi nagɾi] ), known in classical manuscripts as Sylhet Nagri ( ꠍꠤꠟꠦꠐ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ ) as well as by many other names , is an Indic script of the Brahmic family . The script was historically used in the regions of Bengal and Assam , that were east of the Padma . It was primarily used in
128-411: A lexical similarity of 53.2%. The phoneme inventory of Sylheti differs from both Standard Rarhi Bengali as well as the typical Bangladeshi Standard . It is characterised by a loss of breathiness and aspiration contrasts, leading to a significant reduction in its phoneme inventory and to the development of tones . In particular, the following developments are seen: Sylheti is tonal . This
192-773: A documentation of Sylheti vocabulary was in the Government Report on the History and Statistics of Sylhet District by T. Walton, B.C.S. in 1857, which contained a list of peculiar words used in Sylhet. Many terms that were listed here differ from modern Sylheti – highlighting its evolution. In 1868, another short glossary of local terms in various districts of the Dacca Division (which included Sylhet) were written up and compared to standard Bengali to allow ease in understanding local vernaculars. Despite being annexed to
256-531: A language on its own right. Ethnologue groups Sylheti in Bengali–Assamese languages ; whereas Glottolog gives further subgrouping and places it in the "Eastern Bengali" group alongside Hajong , separately from the Bengali dialects. The classification of Sylheti is contentious—Chalmers (1996) suggested that it was generally identified as a dialect of Bengali though there were efforts to recognise it as
320-472: A language. Grierson had classified Sylheti as an Eastern Bengali dialect and had noted that it "possess all the peculiar characteristics of the extreme Eastern Bengali type." Anecdotal evidence suggests that Sylhetis, who could also speak in Standard Bengali, considered the two languages to be mutually intelligible. On the basis of the anecdotal evidence of mutual intelligibility, regionality and
384-573: A part of any formal education, reached the common people with seeming ease. In the Sylhet region, at one stage literary works in Sylheti Nagri became more popular in usage than the Bengali script. Although the script vastly extended across Bengal , its use "was restricted to a certain class of Muslims", in particular Muslim women. As late as the 1930s, Nagendranath Basu noticed that the Bengali Muslims of Bishnupur, Bankura were using
448-726: A publishing company called Utsho Prokashon based in Dhaka , and Anwar Rashid's New Nation Library in Puran Lane, Sylhet. By 2014, a collection of 25 manuscripts, known as Nagri Grantha Sambhar , was published by Utsho Prokashon's Muhammad Abdul Mannan and Selim. The recent revivals sparked a great interest in the country, and achieved significant coverage in national newspapers, TV and radio channels across Bangladesh. The government enabled free circulation of books about Nagri to be distributed to schools and colleges in Sylhet. A documentary directed by Sarwar Tamizuddin, titled Nagri Lipir Nabajatra ,
512-480: A standardised writing system. Historically in the Sylhet region, the Sylheti Nagri script was used alongside the Bengali script. Sylheti Nagri was however mostly limited to writing religious poetry. The script often avoided tatsama (Sanskrit-derived terms) and incorporated Perso-Arabic vocabulary. Additionally, Sylheti Nagri texts were traditionally paginated from right to left. It is claimed by some that
576-594: A woodblock type for the script and founded the Islamia Printing Press in Bandar Bazar, Sylhet . Padmanath Bhattacharjee Vidyabinod, who wrote the first scholarly article on the script, is of the opinion that Abdul Karim's standardisation marks the start of the script's reawakening (nobojonmo) period. Prior to Abdul Karim's intervention, not much is known about the popularity and usage of the script. The manuscripts were of prosaic quality, but poetry
640-736: Is a diglossia where Sylheti is one among other low status regional dialects while Standard Bengali, the official language , has a high status. In the Indian state of Assam where Assamese is the state language, Standard Bengali language serves as an additional official language in its Barak Valley districts; which host a majority Sylheti-speaking population. In the United Kingdom , British schools have begun enlisting Sylheti in their syllabi. BBC News has also broadcast online videos relating to COVID-19 in five major South Asian languages including Sylheti. Grierson (1903) notes that
704-471: Is a " minoritised , politically unrecognised, and understudied language." It is currently not officially recognised as a language in either Bangladesh or India. Many native speakers consider it to be a slang or corrupt version of Standard Bengali and not an independent language; and there is a reported language shift to Standard Bengali and a decrease in the number of native speakers since parents are not teaching it to their children. In Bangladesh, there
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#1732800963804768-919: Is a difference between the pronunciation of ꠞ rô and ꠠ ṛo . Although in ordinary speech these are pronounced the same as /ɾɔ/ . Sylheti Nagari has four poetry marks. Besides, it uses the Brahmic mark daṇḍa as well as some Latin-based punctuation marks . The following is a sample text in Sylheti of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations : Sylheti in Sylheti Nagari script Sylheti in phonetic Romanization Sylheti in IPA Gloss Translation In 1997, Sue Lloyd-Williams of STAR produced
832-614: Is a quasi-caste purana for the Vadnagar Nāgars. It was partly composed before the late 13th century up to circa 17th century and was added to the existing Skanda Purāṇa , as part of a wider trend of adding mainly unrelated khaṇḍas to the text. The text extols the holy sites around Vaḍanagara (historically known as Ānarta, Ānandapura, and Camatkārapura). The Nāgars are divided into two sections: Gr̥hasthas who had received land grants from kings and did not have to work as priests, and Bhikṣus who earn money through alms from priesthood. In
896-410: Is added, nouns are also inflected for number . Below are two tables which show the inflections of an animate noun, ꠍꠣꠔ꠆ꠞ satrô ('student'), and an inanimate noun, ꠎꠥꠔꠣ zuta ('shoe'). ꠢꠤꠇꠠꠣ ꠉꠥ / hikɽa- gu / ꠢꠤꠇꠠꠣ ꠉꠥꠔꠣ hikɽa- guta ꠢꠤꠇꠠꠣ ꠉꠥ / ꠢꠤꠇꠠꠣ ꠉꠥꠔꠣ hikɽa- gu / hikɽa- guta the student ꠢꠤꠇꠠꠣ ꠅꠇꠟ hikɽa- ôxôl ꠢꠤꠇꠠꠣ ꠅꠇꠟ hikɽa- ôxôl
960-570: Is also the case in other parts of South Asia such as Sindh , Multan and Varanasi . Baitali Kaithi was a former script used to write Hindustani at a similar time, and it was identical to Sylhet Nagri with the exception that the latter had a matra (upper horizontal line used in Brahmic scripts ). Others say that the script was invented by immigrant Bhikkhus (originally Buddhist in faith) from neighbouring countries such as Nepal . Manuscripts have been found of works such as Rag Namah by Fazil Nasim Muhammad, Shonabhaner Puthi by Abdul Karim and
1024-587: Is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by an estimated 11 million people, primarily in the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh , Barak Valley of Assam , and northern parts of Tripura in India . Besides, there are substantial numbers of Sylheti speakers in the Indian states of Meghalaya , Manipur and Nagaland . as well as diaspora communities in the United Kingdom , the United States , Canada and
1088-496: Is characterised by its simplistic glyph, with fewer letters than Bengali. The total number of letters is 32; there are 5 vowels and 28 consonants. The widely accepted number of vowels is 5, although some texts show additional vowels. For example, the diphthong ôi has sometimes been regarded as an additional vowel. The vowels don't follow the sequence of Bengali alphabet. The vowels also have their own respective diacritics known as "xar" ( ꠇꠣꠞ ). There are 27 consonants. The names of
1152-459: Is no clear evidence of direct borrowing of lexical items from those languages into Sylheti, there is still a possibility that the emergence of Sylheti tones is due to external influence, as the indigenous speakers of Tibeto-Burman languages by and large use Sylheti as a common medium for interaction. Sylheti grammar is the study of the morphology and syntax of Sylheti. When a definite article such as -gu/ţa (singular) or -guin/ţin (plural)
1216-670: Is rare among the Indo-Aryan languages , but not unheard of, e.g. in Punjabi , Dogri , Chittagonian , Gawri (Kalam Kohistani), Torwali , some Eastern Bengali varieties, etc. There are two types of tonal contrasts in Sylheti: the emergence of high tone in the vowels following the loss of aspiration, and a level tone elsewhere. A more recent study shows that there is a three-way tonal system in Sylheti words with two syllables or more. According to this analysis, words with aspiration in
1280-468: The Assam Province during colonial rule, Sylheti speakers felt a linguistic affinity with the rest of Bengal. Bengali literature had some influence from Sylheti, popular songwriters or poets such as Hason Raja or Shah Abdul Karim , significantly contributed to the literature. Sylhet was reunited with Bengal following a referendum in 1947 . According to Simard, Dopierala and Thaut, Sylheti
1344-930: The British Raj . They have occupied important administrative posts in the courts during the time of the Gujarat Sultanate and the Mughal Empire . The Nagar Brahmins originate in Vadnagar , in northern Gujarat , but are now mostly concentrated in Kathiawar . The name 'Nagar' is also believed to have come from their geographic origin, Vadnagar. The Brahmins mentioned in the Nidhanpur and Dubi inscriptions of king Bhaskaravarman bore surnames "which are at present used by Kayasthas of Bengal and Nagara Brahmins of Gujarat ", and historians suggest
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#17328009638041408-873: The Metropolitan University, Sylhet , Sabbir Ahmed Shawon and Muhammad Nurul Islam (under the name CapsuleStudio) developed and launched the Syloti Nagri Keyboard , also for Google Play , on 9 December 2017. Different keyboards and fonts are available now: Syloti Nagri was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2005 with the release of version 4.1. The Unicode block for Syloti Nagri, is U+A800–U+A82F: Sylheti language Sylheti ( Sylheti Nagri : ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ , síloṭi , pronounced [sílɔʈi] ; Bengali : সিলেটি , sileṭi , pronounced [sileʈi] )
1472-573: The Middle East . It is variously perceived as either a dialect of Bengali or a language in its own right. While most linguists consider it an independent language, for many native speakers Sylheti forms the diglossic vernacular , with standard Bengali forming the codified lect . Some incorrectly consider it as a "corrupt" form of Bengali, and there is a reported language shift from Sylheti to Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, India and
1536-613: The Nāgarakhaṇḍa the Nāgars are divided into Nāgars who live in the city, and Bāhyas who had to live outside (often due to excommunication). The Vaḍanagara Praśasti states that in the time of King Kumārapāla , a wall was built around the town for the protection of the "viprapura" ("Brāḥmaṇa town"). According to the Vastupāla Carita of Jinaharṣa Gaṇi, the Vāghela king Vīsaladeva formed
1600-845: The Sylheti language as an integral part of a cultural heritage, in contrast to the dominance of Standard Bengali. SOAS University of London in the United Kingdom is one institute that has led such initiatives like the "Sylheti Project". The New Testament is one of the few books that has been translated into Sylheti with the Sylheti Nagri script by James Lloyd-Williams and others in the UK, titled Pobitro Injil Shorif in 2014. The Sylheti Nagri script can be divided into vowels and vowel diacritics/marks, consonants and consonant conjuncts, diacritical and punctuation marks. Vowels & consonants are used as alphabet and also as diacritical marks. The script
1664-630: The United States , most are concentrated in New York City , and in Hamtramck, Michigan where majority of Bangladeshi Americans there are of Sylheti origin. There are also small numbers located in Toronto , Canada . Significant Sylheti-speaking communities reside in the Middle East of which most are migrant workers, and in many other countries throughout the world. Sylheti shares most linguistic properties with Standard Bengali, with
1728-716: The Vaishnava Padavali . As a result, Sylhet is considered as the spiritual capital of mysticism and the fertile land of Baul music. A great number of poets enriched Sylheti literature. Among them, Hason Raja , Radha Raman , Syed Shah Noor, Shitalong Shaha, Durbin Shaha are noteworthy. The main theme of the Nagri literature are mainly religious, Islamic history , tradition, stories, Raga, Baul and mystic music. There have been 140 books have found, including 88 printed books in Sylheti Nagri script. Sylheti currently does not have
1792-592: The 10th century. The Muslim Conquest of Sylhet in 1303 CE extended the migratory movements of Muslims from western lands, who settled among the native population and greatly influenced the local language. Thus Sylheti derived a large number of words from Persian and Arabic , cultivating the Perso-Arabic influence on the vernacular. A script was developed in the region called Sylheti Nagri , which primarily focused on disseminating Sufi poetry, known as puthi . Its earliest known work had been written during
1856-519: The 1600s, called Bhedsar by Syed Shah Husayn Alam. The literature was transcribed in the standard form of late Middle Bengali, it was similar to the Dobhashi idiom though phonologically was strongly influenced by Sylheti. The script was read and taught culturally among households and was not institutionalised, as the Islamic dynasties who ruled over Bengal established Persian alongside Arabic as
1920-570: The 6th century under Kamarupa king. Sylhet (Srihatta) then emerged as a center of lowland territorialism after the 10th century. The 11th century Bhatera grants from the Srihatta kings Kesavadeva and Isanadeva were written in Sanskrit. Another notable copper plate inscription was found in the village of Paschimbhag in Rajnagar , Moulvibazar that was issued by King Srichandra during
1984-587: The Bengali Kaysathas may have originated from the same group as Nāgar Brahmins. During the rule of the Caulukya and Vāghela dynasties, the Nāgars held prestigious positions in royal courts along with Jains and other Brahmins. Their occupations included writing Sanskrit literature, performing Vedic rituals, and conducting royal funerals; they were also famed throughout India as pilgrimage officiants at tīrtha (holy water) sites. The Nāgara Khaṇḍa
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2048-559: The Bengali alphabet for all purposes, but the Nagri script for puthis . According to George Grierson in his Linguistic Survey of India , the script was hardly used in any formal documentation in comparison to the Bengali script, and was only used for puthi reading or some would sign their names in this script. Many Sylheti Nagri presses fell out of use during the Bangladeshi Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 , including Islamia Press in Sylhet town which
2112-707: The Sarada Printing and Publishing in Naiyorpul, Sylhet; and Calcutta's General Printing Works in 16 Gardner Lane, Taltala as well as the Hamidi Press in Sealdah . It has been asserted from scholarly writings that the script was used as far as Bankura , Barisal , Chittagong and Noakhali . The script had also spread to Tripura , Mymensingh and Dhaka . The script is thought to have spread to Chittagong and Barisal via river. The script, never having been
2176-400: The Sylhet region. Contemporarily, the script is being revived by some as a key identity marker of Sylhet's cultural heritage. Sylhet Nagri is a compound of " Sylhet " ( ꠍꠤꠟꠐ ) and " nāgrī " ( ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ ). Sylhet is the name of the region in which the script was primarily used and originated from. Nagri means "of or pertaining to an abode (nagar)". Hence, Sylhet Nagri denotes from
2240-699: The Sylheti Translation and Research (STAR), Latin (Roman) script is the most used script for writing Sylheti. The New Testament in Sylheti was published in the Sylhet Nagri script along with versions in the Latin and in the Bengali–Assamese script , in 2014. Sylheti is the primary language of the Sylhet Division in north-eastern Bangladesh, with its concentration mostly in the districts of Sylhet , Moulvibazar , eastern Sunamganj and north-eastern Habiganj . Recent findings assert that
2304-514: The Sylheti community itself. Halat-un-Nabi , a puthi written by Sadeq Ali is considered to be the most prominent literature in Sylheti Nagri. The presence and influence of Shah Jalal and Shri Chaitanya dev is found in the Sylheti literature. According to Syed Mostafa Kamal, (approximately 1650 AD) the Baul tradition was founded based on the combination of Chaitanyavad and Jaganmohani ideologies, that mystic literature influenced and seen in
2368-555: The abode or city of Sylhet . In recent times it has come to be known as Sylheti Nagri although this name was not used in the classical manuscripts such as Pohela Kitab by Muhammad Abdul Latif. Nagendranath Basu asserts that Nagri is named after the Nagar Brahmins who were known for retaining their Nagri scripts while adopting the local language of places which they migrated to. The script has been known by other names such as Jalalabadi Nagri ( ꠎꠣꠟꠣꠟꠣꠛꠣꠖꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ ) after
2432-408: The basis of phonology and phonetics, lexicon, grammatical structure and a lack of mutual intelligibility, some recent linguists claim that Sylheti is not merely a dialectal variation of Bengali but a language in its own right. Phonologically Sylheti is distinguished from Standard Bengali and other regional varieties by significant deaspiration and spirantisation, leading to major restructuring of
2496-545: The branches of the Nāgars at a yajña (sacrifice) at Darbhavatīpura (modern Dabhoi ), the branches being the Vīsalanagara, Ṣaṭpadra, Kr̥ṣṇapura, Citrapura, and Praśnika branches. The subcastes of the Nagars are also known as Visnagarā, Sāṭhodarā, Kr̥ṣṇorā or Krasnora, Citroḍā, Praśnora. In the later periods many Nāgars also became financiers and moneychangers. During the rule of the Gujarat Sultanate and Mughal Empire ,
2560-505: The consonant inventory and the development of tones. As majority of the diaspora in the United Kingdom speak Sylheti, it created an environment that was somewhat uninfluenced by Standard Bengali, inevitably leading some to view Sylheti as a distinct language. During the 1980s there were unsuccessful attempts to recognise Sylheti as a language in its own right by a small group in the London borough of Tower Hamlets , which lacked support from
2624-495: The diaspora; though Sylheti has more vitality than Standard Bengali among the diaspora in the United Kingdom. Sylheti is eponymously named after Sylhet , referring to the dialect or language spoken of that area. According to Grierson (1903) the vernacular was called Sylhettia by the Europeans after the town of Sylhet. Though the speakers at that time referred to it as Jaintiapuri , Purba Srihattiya , or Ujania with
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2688-438: The different eastern dialect groups, Sylheti and Chittagonian have phonetic and morphological properties that are alien to standard Bengali and other western dialects of Bengali, and these differences are such that Sylheti is more distant to standard Bengali than is Assamese. Recent scholarship notes that these morpho-phonological and mutual intelligibility differences are significant enough that Sylheti could claim itself as
2752-513: The earliest known work Talib Husan (1549) by Ghulam Husan. The simplistic nature of the script inspired a lot of poets, though the bulk of Sylheti Nagri literature was born in the late 19th century. Abdul Karim, a munshi who was studying and completing his education in London , spent several years in the English capital to learn the printing trade. After returning home in circa 1869, he designed
2816-536: The eastern part of the Sylhet region , to document poetry known as puthis . In the course of the 20th century, it has lost much ground to the standardised Eastern Nagari script . Printing presses for Sylheti Nagri existed as late as into the 1970s, and in the 2000s, a Unicode font was created for the script. Historically the script was transcribed in Middle Bengali , though having similar characteristics to
2880-494: The establishment of a £20,000 circular mural at Surma Point known as the Nagri Chattar in 2018, which was designed by Shubhajit Chowdhury. The official building of Sylhet District's Deputy Commissioner has also installed Nagri signboards. Another aspect of its contemporary revival is it being viewed as a key marker of Sylheti identity, in particular within the diaspora. This revival is primarily driven by efforts to preserve
2944-422: The fact that Sylheti is spoken by a predominantly rural community, Rasinger (2007) concludes that Sylheti could be considered a dialect of Bengali. Simard, Dopierala and Thaut have pointed out that the intelligibility could be an effect of prior exposure of Sylheti speakers to Standard Bengali, and that the academic consensus is that mutual intelligibility ranges from "unintelligible" to "hardly intelligible". On
3008-477: The final syllable historically gain a high tone across the word, whilst those with initial aspiration have this replaced by a low tone across the word. Those with no historical aspirated consonants retain a mid tone. It is considered that these tones arose when aspirated consonants lost their aspiration. Sylheti continues to have a long history of coexisting with tonal Tibeto-Burman languages including various dialects of Kokborok such as Reang . Even though there
3072-476: The first computer font for script. The New Surma is a proprietary font. Noto fonts provides an open source font for the script. Syloti Nagri was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2005, with the release of version 4.1, and is available on Apple devices . Other fonts include Mukter Ahmed's Fonty 18.ttf, developed from manuscripts to include traditional Sylheti numbers. As a routine project of
3136-419: The language of eastern Sylhet is not intelligible to Bengalis from the west, though he still classed it as Bengali, grouping it under "Eastern Bengali". Chatterji (1926) too calls it a dialect of Bengali and places it in the eastern Vangiya group of Magadhi Prakrit and notes that all Bengali dialects were independent of each other and did not emanate from the literary Bengali called " sadhu bhasha ". Among
3200-559: The latter meaning "the language of the upper country". Sylheti is also spelt or known as Sylhetti (or Sileti ), Sylheti Bangla and Siloti (also spelt in Syloti or Syloty ). Sylheti belongs to the Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, that evolved from Magadhi Prakrit . The lowlands around Sylhet were originally inhabited by ancient Khasi people (Austroasiatic); and the earliest known Indo-Aryan settlements were made in
3264-466: The letters are typically just the consonant sound with the inherent vowel ꠅ /ɔ/ . Since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters' names look identical to the letter itself, i.e. the name of the letter ꠊ is ghô . / ɽ ɔ/ Due to historical sound changes, the so-called "aspirated consonants" cause the tone to rise, but the consonants are pronounced just like unaspirated ones (conceptually similar to Thai and Gurmukhi ). There
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#17328009638043328-645: The local dialect spoken in much of the Habiganj district differs quite significantly from Sylheti. Sylheti is also widely spoken in the southern Assam region of Barak Valley , India, which includes the districts of Cachar , Hailakandi and Karimganj . In addition, it is spoken in the northern parts of Tripura and Jiribam , Manipur . There is also a significant population of Sylheti speakers in Hojai district of Central Assam, Shillong in Meghalaya , and
3392-420: The more popular Dobhashi literary dialect, it was distinguished for its phonological influence from Sylheti . It is also claimed that the orthography of the script equates with Sylheti, reflecting the phonetic and grammatical features of the vernacular, it provided a simpler and more precise representation than the more prevalent Bengali script . Sylheti Nagri therefore represented a unique literary culture of
3456-491: The name of Jalalabad ( Sylhet ), Phul Nagri ( ꠚꠥꠟ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ ), Jangli Nagri and Kat Nagri , among others. Another popular term is Musalmani Nagri ( ꠝꠥꠍꠟ꠆ꠝꠣꠘꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ ) due to its prevalence among Muslims of Sylhet. According to Qadir (1999) and Professor Clifford Wright, the script descends from Kaithi script , a script predominantly used in Bihar . The specific origin of the script is debated. Though most popular in Sylhet,
3520-570: The official languages. Printed texts of the script reached its peak during the late 19th century, however its use became obsolete by around the middle of the 20th century. In 1903, Grierson reported that Sylheti was spoken only around Sylhet town of the then Sylhet district (now Sylhet Division and Karimganj district in Assam), and that among the Indo-Aryan speakers in the district, about 33 per cent spoke this language. The earliest appearance of
3584-526: The orthography of the script equates with Sylheti, due to the fewer characters compared with the Bengali script as there are fewer phonemes found in Sylheti. An endangered script, it has since seen a revival mostly by academics and linguists. Standard Bengali is the medium of instruction in Bangladesh . some may therefore write in Sylheti using the Bengali–Assamese script . In United Kingdom , publishers use Latin script for Sylheti and according to
3648-566: The script was historically also used in Greater Mymensingh , Northeast India and West Bengal . One hypothesis is that the Muslims of Sylhet were the ones to invent it for the purpose of mass Islamic education, which is thought to have taken place during the 15th-century, when Bengali Hindus led by Krishna Chaitanya , started a Sanskrit and Vaishnavist reawakening movement. On the other hand, Ahmad Hasan Dani believes that, it
3712-426: The script's origins to Buddhists and Hindus who later converted to Islam . A popular theory is that it was brought to the region via Nagar Brahmins . This is a Hindu caste known for travelling and settling across the subcontinent , adopting the local language but writing in their own Nagari-variant of Kaithi instead. The Brahmins converted to Islam though retained the practice of the Nagri script for poetry. This
3776-610: The state of Nagaland . A few numbers are also located in Kolkata , most of whom are migrants from Assam. Outside the Indian subcontinent , the largest grouping of Sylheti speakers reside in the United Kingdom , of which 95 percent of British Bangladeshis have origins from the Sylhet region. It is estimated there are around 400,000 Sylheti speakers in the UK. The largest concentration live in east London boroughs, such as Tower Hamlets. There are also significant numbers of speakers in
3840-512: The students ꠎꠥꠔꠣ ꠉꠥ / zuta- gu / ꠎꠥꠔꠣ ꠉꠥꠔꠣ zuta- guta ꠎꠥꠔꠣ ꠉꠥ / ꠎꠥꠔꠣ ꠉꠥꠔꠣ zuta- gu / zuta- guta the shoe Nagar Brahmin Nagar Brahmin is a Brahmin subcaste from the Indian state of Gujarat . Author T. Sasaki writes, amongst Brahmins of Gujarat , Nagar Brahmins were the most prominent subdivision in the political , economic and social activities of this region both before and during
3904-707: Was aired across the country. The Bangla Academy , an institution funded by the Government of Bangladesh to serve as the official body regarding the Bengali language, has begun hosting Nagri bookstalls at the Ekushey Book Fair . In 2014, a Nagri press conference was held at the Pathak Shamabesh Center in Shahbag , a major neighbourhood located in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka . The Sylhet City Corporation and Sylhet District Council funded
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#17328009638043968-442: Was also abundant. The Munshi Sadeq Ali is considered to have been the greatest and most popular writer of the script. Apart from renowned literary works such as Halat-un-Nabi , Jongonama , Mahabbatnama or Noor Noshihot , it has been used to write medicine and magical manuscripts, as well as Poems of the Second World War . Other Sylheti Nagri presses were established in Sylhet, Sunamganj , Shillong and Kolkata . Some include
4032-419: Was destroyed by a fire. Research on the script multiplied to its greatest extent in post-colonial Pakistan and independent Bangladesh . In the late 20th century, Munshi Ashraf Hussain , a researcher of Bengali folk literature, contributed immensely to Sylheti Nagri research. In 2009, the publication of literature in the Nagri script recommenced in Bangladesh through the efforts of Mostafa Selim, who founded
4096-472: Was invented by the Afghans during their rule of Bengal , since Nagri letters resemble Afghan coin symbols and the large number of Afghan inhabitants in Sylhet at the time. Another theory dates the script's origin as late as the seventeenth—eighteenth century, claiming that it was invented to facilitate the Muslim sepoys coming from the joint state of Bihar and other immigrant Muslims. Though almost solely used by Muslims , there are other theories which point
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