See Parliamentary Papers relating to the reconstitution of the provinces of Bengal and Assam (Cd. 2658 and Cd. 2746, 1905); Colonel E. T. Dalton, The Ethnology of Bengal (1872); Sir W. W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (1868), and Orissa (1872); Sir H. H. Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal (1891); C. E. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors (1901); and Sir James Bourdillon, The Partition of Bengal (Society of Arts, 1905).
BENGAL, BAY OF, a portion of the Indian Ocean, resembling a triangle in shape, lying between India and Burma. A zone 50 m. wide extending from the island of Ceylon and the Coromandel coast to the head of the bay, and thence southwards through a strip embracing the Andaman and Nicobar islands, is bounded by the 100 fathom line of sea bottom; some 50 m. beyond this lies the 500-fathom limit. Opposite the mouth of the Ganges, however, the intervals between these depths are very much extended by deltaic influence. The bay receives many large rivers, of which the most important are the Ganges and Brahmaputra on the north, the Irrawaddy on the east, and the Mahanadi, Godavari, Kistna and Cauvery on the west. On the west coast it has no harbours, Madras having a mere open roadstead, but on the east there are many good ports, such as Akyab, Moulmein, Rangoon and Tavoy river. The islands in the bay are very numerous, including the Andaman, Nicobar and Mergui groups. The group of islands, Cheduba and others, in the north-east, off the Burmese coast, are remarkable for a chain of mud volcanoes, which are occasionally active. Thus in December 1906 a new island of mud was thrown up, and measured 307 by 217 yds.
BENGALI, with Oriya and Assamese, three of the four forms of speech which compose the Eastern Group of the Indo-Aryan Languages (q.v.). This group includes all the Aryan languages spoken in India east of the longitude of Benares, and its members are the following:—
| Number of speakers in | |
| British India, 1901. | |
| Bengali | 44,624,048 |
| Oriya | 9,687,429 |
| Assamese | 1,350,846 |
| Bihari | 34,579,844 |
| ————— | |
| Total | 90,242,167 |
Of these Bihari is treated separately. In the present article we shall devote ourselves to the examination of Bengali together with the two other closely connected languages. The reader is throughout assumed to be in possession of the facts described under the heads Indo-Aryan Languages and Prakrit.
Bengali is spoken in the province of Bengal proper, i.e. in, and on both sides of the delta of the Ganges, and also in the Eastern Bengal portion of the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. The name “Bengali” is an English word, derived from the English word “Bengal.” Natives call the Language.language Banga-Bhāṣā, or the language of Banga, i.e. “Bengal.” “Oṛiyā” is the native name for the language of Ōḍra or Orissa. Assamese, again an English word, is spoken in the Assam Valley. Its native name is Asamiyā, pronounced Ohåmiyā. All these languages have alphabets derived from early forms of the well-known Nagari character of northern India. That of Bengali dates from about the 11th century A.D. It is a cursive script which admits of considerable speed in writing. The Assamese alphabet is the same as that of Bengali, but has one additional character to represent the sound of w, which has to be expressed in the former language in a very awkward fashion. In Orissa, till lately, writing was done on a talipot palm-leaf, on which the letters were scratched with an iron stylus. In such circumstances straight lines would tend to split the leaf, and accordingly the alphabet received a peculiar curved appearance typical of it and of one or two other South Indian methods of writing.
The three languages are all the immediate descendants of Māgadhī Prakrit (see Prakrit), the headquarters of which were in south Behar, near the modern city of Patna. From here it spread in three lines—southwards, where it developed into Oriya; south-eastwards into Bengal proper, where it became Bengali; and eastwards, through Northern Bengal, into Assam, where it became Assamese. It thus appears that the language of Northern Bengal, though usually and conveniently treated as a dialect of Bengali, is not so in reality, but is a connecting link between Assamese and Bihari, the language of Behar. It is noteworthy that Northern Bengali and Assamese often agree in their grammar with Oriya, as against standard Bengali.
Omitting border forms of speech, Bengali, as a vernacular, has two main dialects, a western and an eastern, the former being the standard. The boundary-line between the two may be roughly put at the 89th degree of east longitude. The eastern dialect has many marked peculiarities, amongst which we may mention a tendency to disaspiration, the pronunciation of c as ts, of ch as s, and of j as z. In the northern part of the tract a medial r is often elided, and in the extreme east there is a broader pronunciation of the vowel a, like that in the English word “ball,” k is sounded like the ch in “loch,” and both c and ch are pronounced like s. The letter p is often sounded like w, and s like h, which again, when initial, is dropped. The distinction between cerebral and dental letters is lost, so that the words āţh and sāt are both pronounced ’āt. In the south-east, near Chittagong, corruption has gone even further, and the local dialect, which is practically a new language, is unintelligible to a man from Western Bengal. Throughout the eastern districts there is a strong tendency to epenthesis, e.g. kāli is pronounced kāĭl. A more important dialectic difference in Bengali is that between the literary speech and the vernacular. The literary vocabulary is highly Sanskritized, so much so that it is not understood by any native of Bengal who has not received special instruction in it. Its grammar preserves numerous archaic or pseudo-archaic forms, which are invariably contracted in the colloquial speech of even the most highly educated. For instance, “I do” is expressed in the literary dialect by karitēchi, but in the vernacular by kȯrcci or kȯcci. Oriya and Assamese may be said to have no dialects. There are a few local variations, but the standard form of speech, as a whole, is used everywhere in the respective tracts where the languages are spoken.
The three languages, being all children of a common parent, present many similar features. Oriya on the whole preserves the usual accentuation of the Indo-Aryan Languages (q.v.), seldom having the stress syllable farther back than the antepenultimate. Bengali, on the other hand, throws the accent as far back as possible, and this produces the contracted forms which we observe in the colloquial language, the first syllable of a word being strongly accented, and the rest being hurried over. Literary Bengali preserves the full form of the word, and in reading aloud this full form is adhered to. Assamese follows Bengali in its accentuation, but the language has never been the toy of euphuism. In its literature colloquial words are employed, and are written as they are pronounced colloquially.
In the following account of the three languages, Bengali, literary and colloquial, will be primarily dealt with, and then the points of difference between it and the other two will be described. Abbreviations used: A. = Assamese, Bg. = Bengali, O. = Oriya, Pr. = Prakrit, Mg. Pr. = Māgadhi Prakrit, Skr. = Sanskrit.
Vocabulary.—As already said, Literary Bengali abounds in tatsamas, or words borrowed in modern times from Sanskrit (see Indo-Aryan Languages), and these have also intruded themselves into the speech of the educated. So much has the false taste for these learned words obtained the mastery that, in the literary language, when a genuine Bengali or tadbhava word is used in literature it is frequently not put into writing, but the corresponding learned tatsama is written in its place, although the tadbhava is read. It is as though a French writer wrote sicca when he wished the word sèche to be pronounced. Similarly, the Bengali word for the goddess of Fortune is Lakkhī, but in books this is always written in the Skr. form Lakṣmī, although no Bengali would dream of saying anything but Lakkhī, even when reciting a purple passage ore rotunda. In fact, the vocal organs of most Bengalis are incapable of uttering the sound connoted by the letters Lakṣmī. The result is that the spelling of a Bengali word rarely represents its pronunciation. Oriya also borrows freely from Sanskrit, but there is no confusion between tatsamas and tadbhavas, as in Bengali. Assamese, on the other hand, is remarkably free from these parasites, its vocabulary being mainly tadbhava. In Eastern Bengal, where Mussulmans predominate, there is a free use of words borrowed from Arabic and Persian.
