386 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [Chap.J as the five influencial Provinces of Aryyavarta were ; called, had in the past ages a greater touch with one another and exchanged their thoughts and | ideas more freely than now. Affinity in Vaisnava literature has brought many Hindi language. vords into Bengali. In fact a large number of songs in old Vaisnava literature were composed in what is called Vrajavali—a sort of Hindi current in Durbhanga. This admixture of Hindi with Bengali was due to the predilection in favour of the dialect of Vrindavan on the part of Vaisnava writers. They also adopted it in order to imitate Vidyapati the great master of songs, who wrote in the Maithila language. But the Hindi words occurring in the works of the Vaisnavas cannot claim a place | in the vocabulary of the Bengali language. Outside | the pale of Vaisnava literature we come across many Bengali words more or less allied to Hindi | and other dialects of Aryyavarta, the use of which | has grown obsolete now. This indicates that — Bengali in early times, as we might have surmised, bore a closer affinity than now to other dialects of | Northern India, whose origin is Sanskritic. 16. branched off from the parent language at a remote | point of time when the Aryan settlers divided them- | selves into communities and settled in different — parts of the country. So in the past the dialects _ also were nearer to one another. This fact in the © case of Bengali is evidenced by the existence of | the following and other similar words in our litera- | ture of the 15th and 16th centuries. “OLS, তেত.কে, বড়ুয়া, পইতায়, স্থবোধিয়া, সরুয়া, : পোখবি, বাবন, দোন, ডাবিয়া (Manik Chandra Rajar a
