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Brick Lane Circle: Bengal History Week, London, Oct 14, 2012
Bengali Pundits, the British and the Artificial Construction of the Bengali Language in the Nineteenth Century
Dr Anindita Ghosh, University of Manchester
Please note that this paper is a combination of extracts from my previously published book Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture in a Colonial Society, c. 1778-1905 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006). For citations, therefore, please refer to the original and not this paper.
PPT NO 3: THE BEGINNING OF SANSKRITISATION The nineteenth century witnessed the evolution of Bengali as a modern prose language in print literature, when dominant norms were laid down to standardise and control what had been a flexible and regionalised dialect. The rapid progress of standardisation and sanskritisation of the vernacular through the programmes of the Fort William College, early schoolbook societies, and missionaries, was carried through in the activities of the literary clubs and societies, and newspapers of the period set up by the Bengali intelligentsia.
The written, sanskritic character of the new print language combined with an unabashedly Hindu stance. An increasing number of scholars have described how an artificial 'purification' of the Bengali language and the attempt to get rid of naturalised Perso-arabic words from its active vocabulary made for a separation between a 'purer' sanskritised sadhu style and its lesser Islamic variant.1 The distinction that thus resulted marked out two separate styles. One was the standard Bengali, generally marked by a fair percentage of tatsama or Sanskrit loan-words. The other was 'Musalman-bengali', distinguished by its dominant Perso-arabic content, identifiable with Hindus and Muslims respectively. Such communalisation of the once shared vernacular adds an interesting cultural dimension to studies on the political mobilisation of Muslims and Hindus in nineteenth century Bengal.2
PPT NO 4: ‘STANDARD BENGALI VS MUSALMAN BENGALI
It was the vernacular reformist, Reverend James Long, who first coined the term ‘Musalman-bengali’in 1855, and fixed its social status.3 He regarded it as chiefly the language of fictional works lacking in taste, and read by Muslim boatmen.4
The dislike of the Persian influence in Bengali by British colonial authorities and missionaries alike became obvious early on in their project for linguistic reform. In his preface to the Grammar in 1778, Halhed had called the variety of Bengali with Perso-arabic words in it 'debased'. In 1821, the Friend of India argued passionately in its columns for replacing Persian as the language of courts, to deliver the Hindus 'from the haughty domination of their Mussalman conquerors'.5 Even as late as 1879, this attitude had not changed among the official community. In his report on vernacular publications, C. W. Bolton even hesitated 'to call a language', for it possessed 'neither grammar nor a vocabulary, being but a mongrel of Bengali and Urdu'.6
A deep-seated mistrust of Muslims following 1857 and a predictable resentment towards Persian as the official language of the previous imperial regime combined to fuel official prejudice. But the predominance of Hindu pundits and a Hindu urban intelligentsia in the formative stages of shaping the new print-language contributed to and perpetuated such perceptions. In 1884, Chundernath Bose, Librarian to the Bengal Library, in a routine annual report, did not hesitate to trace the inaccuracies in a Bengali primer to the author's Islamic identity: 'That the author is a Musalman not well acquainted with the Bengali language may be regarded as accounting for the publication of this particular work.'7 The innate social and political agenda implicit in such utterances could not be clearer. Bengali, or at least ‘Hindu-Bengali’, the favoured language of officialdom, was for Hindus and Bengalis only. Bengali Muslims were better staying off its bounds.
Codifying the language: Halhed and Others
BHABANICHARAN: PPT NO 5: BHABANICHARAN AND KALIKATA KAMALALAYA
Perhaps one of the best contemporary accounts of changing Bengali styles in Calcutta is Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay's (1794-1848) Kalikata Kamalalay, a satirical sketch written in 1823 to enlighten readers of the various 'ways, manners and wiles of Calcutta'.8 It recorded a fictional conversation between a 'rural person' and an 'urban person', touching on various contemporary social issues. Bhabanicharan, himself a migrant to the city from a Burdwan village, and strongly identifying with staunch Brahmanical beliefs, can be seen obliquely reflected in the utterances of the rural person.9 As an active member of Hindu organisations like the Gaudiya Samaj and the Dharma Sabha, and the publisher of the conservative newspaper Samachar Chandrika, Bhabanicharan harboured a lot of sympathy for the 'old order', where brahmins were respected and suitably honoured, religious rituals diligently observed, and the language of the sastras dominated. However, he was also the product of the colonial trade and bureaucratic framework, having served first as a clerk, and then in respectable positions variously in the Hooghly Collectorate, Bishop's College and the Englishman newspaper.10 As such neither could he ignore the practical need to accommodate old values with the new demands and opportunities created by the colonial situation. On the one hand, he criticised the nouveau babus for their western manners and the neglect of Hindu tradition.11 On the other hand he praised them for their cultivated habits, patronage of education through the Hindu College and School Book Societies, and sponsoring of printed works.12
One of the topics in focus in the imaginary conversation of the book was the current forms of the Bengali language. Throughout the discussion an ambiguity strives to achieve a balance between the honour of brahmins and respect for the brahmanical language on the one hand, and the recognition of powerful groups from other castes and overwhelming material success of non-scriptural languages, on the other.13 The rural man was anxious to know why certain bhadralok were so callous in their employment of words of alien origin in the Bengali language, giving thereby the impression that they had 'never seen the sastras or known learned Sanskrit pundits.' To prove his point he provided the urbanite with a list of 182 'alien' (yavanik) words used in spoken Bengali, for each of which, as he demonstrated, there existed a substitute in the Bengali polite or sadhu variant.14 The urbanite put up a valiant defence at this, but he could furnish a matching list of only 108 Perso-arabic and 22 English words for which, he challenged, no sadhu Bengali substitutes could be supplied.15 The urbanite further pointed out that it was perhaps appropriate to employ such a hybrid, linguistic style for the conducting of day to day matters, light conversation and the like. The more difficult and out of bounds sanskritic form of the vernacular, on the other hand, was good to reserve for only such occasions as the conducting of religious functions.16
The fictional discussion in reality, mirrors the cultural ambivalence of Bhabanicharan's world, caught in the process of transition between two linguistic cultures. A well read man like Bhabanicharan would usually have known all four languages - Sanskrit, Persian, English and Bengali - each serving specific needs. The fact that he stages the subject of changing linguistic styles as a debate is proof that, though aware of the shift, Bhabanicharan himself did not have any unequivocal answers.
NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED: PPT NO 6 AND 7: NB HALHED AND GRAMMAR
The earliest moves to reform the ‘unruly’ language and construct a linguistic agenda of some sort came from the British administrators and missionaries. In the first-ever Bengali grammar written in 1778, N. B. Halhed presented the vernacular in its 'purest' form as deriving exclusively from Sanskrit. The Bengali of his own times, he concluded, fell far below those standards.
PPT NO 8: QUOTE FROM NB HALHED AND GRAMMAR
Their [modern Bengali] form of letters, their mode of spelling and their choice of words are all equally erroneous and absurd. They can neither decline a word nor construct a sentence and their writings are filled with Persian, Arabic and Hindostanic terms, promiscuously thrown together without order and meaning; often embarrassing and obscure .... they seldom separate the several words of a sentence from each other, or conclude a period with a stop.17
These early lexicographers and grammarians of the Bengali language were conscious of their pioneering work in fixing and codifying it. In one of the earliest treatises on the subject, Hints Relating to Native Schools, the Serampore missionary-educationist Joshua Marshman argued in favour of a vernacular medium of education, but strongly emphasised the need for teaching students the correct orthography, grammar and vocabulary of their own language.18
Through their concerted efforts European scholars proceeded to standardise this 'irregular' dialect, by closely basing themselves on Sanskrit. The process can be traced even in the earliest printed work in the language. Halhed's working papers for his Grammar clearly demonstrate how he was replacing a wide variety of alphabetical and orthographic representation, with a standardised orthography.19 Sanskritisation took rapid paces around the turn of the eighteenth century. Commissioned by the East India Company, three of its employees, Jonathan Duncan, Henry Pitts Forster and Neil Benjamin Edmonstone, translated into Bengali nineteen legal texts between 1784 and 1809.20 One scholar has traced in these translations a discernible attempt to supplant Perso-arabic legal terms and phrases with sanskritic equivalents, unfamiliar to the terrain of legalistic writing in the language before.21
PPT NO 9: CHANGES IN NEW SADHU BENGALI
Concern at this stage was mainly with the shaping of an effective, standardised prose style and the preservation of a pristine Sanskrit vocabulary. Literary prose writing therefore came to be marked by the prevalence of tatsama or Sanskrit loan-words, following the classic tradition, and was designated as the sadhu or polite style. Words in rustic or common usage, of Perso-arabic or other alien lineage, and following lax orthography, came to be purged from the regular vocabulary. The new rules allowed verbs to be compounded only out of tatsama words, and longer verbal and pronominal forms were preferred to the shorter ones, current in the colloquial. Particles disappeared. A lot of compound words and phrases came into vogue. Sentences became long and complex and ridden with clauses. Sanskrit influence is also seen at the level of syntax. The result was that while sounding sonorous and impressive, the meaning often remained unclear.22
The application of all these elaborate prescriptive rules to Bengali literary writing changed the structure and vocabulary of prose quite significantly. Suniti Kumar Chatterji has identified a 'doubly artificial' grafting of Sanskrit in the new prose style of the time.23 Other specific changes can also be traced. These were the introduction of the western system of punctuation, paragraphs and versification. The idea of frequent pauses, and distinguishing of a series of sentences or lines from another, was new in the Indian writing system.24
A major task for the missionary-administrators' linguistic programme was the production of grammars, lexicons and vocabularies. Following Halhed's Grammar in 1778, H. P. Forster's A Vocabulary in Two Parts, English and Bengalee and Vice Versa appeared in two volumes. It is significant that it hardly included any of the Perso-arabic words that Forster had used with relative freedom in his earlier legal translations.25 Between 1801 and 1834 several such works were published that established the rule of Sanskrit over the Bengali language.26 In the preface to his Grammar of the Bengal Language, Halhed clearly spells out his preferred model:
PPT NO 10: NB HALHED AGAIN
Such of the Hindoos as have been connected with the Musselman courts, or ... offices, ... have generally complimented their masters by a compliance with these (Perso-arabic) literary innovations. But the Bramins and all other educated Jentoos, ... still adhere with a certain conscientious tenacity to their primeval tongue, and have many ancient books written in its purest style .... In the course of my design I have avoided, with some care, the admission of such words as are not natives of this country, and for that reason have selected all my instances from the most authentic and ancient compositions.27
In fact, his preface had so much to say about Sanskrit that many contemporary European critics and scholars valued it only for its account of that language.28 Halhed's choice decided the course of future grammars in the language. Both William Carey's and G. C. Haughton's grammars, published in 1801 and 1821 respectively, were consciously modelled on his work.29
The Fort William College, Serampore Mission and standardisation
WILLIAM CAREY: PPT NO 11: WILLIAM CAREY AND HIS PUNDIT MRITYUNJOY VIDYALANKAR
A distinctive phase in the standardisation of Bengali prose writing began with the founding of two institutions in 1800, the Mission set up by the Baptists at Serampore and the Fort William College. William Carey - as founding father of the Mission and the principal architect of the College’s Bengali department - had connections with both. With the establishment of the pioneering vernacular press at Serampore from 1800 onwards, a series of printed works in the vernacular began to be produced which had an important bearing on the Bengali language. While most of these publications were tracts and pamphlets meant for proselytisation, the Serampore press was also the supplier of text books - readers, grammars and dictionaries - to the Fort William College and other educational institutions. The Calcutta School Book Society had its publications issuing from the Mission Press.30 The conjunction of the need for textbooks for the College, and the availability of a printing press at Serampore, thus provided the perfect opportunity for setting of literary standards in Bengali print for the first time.
The lack of printed Bengali texts prompted Carey to take up a bold programme of translating, composing and printing. He drew around himself a team of learned pundits at the Sanskrit and Bengali departments of the Fort William College. For the encouragement of authors he even induced the authorities of the College to institute monetary prizes for newly written works of this kind. Although the new Bengali was not ubiquitously taken up by all textbook writers, the sanskritic net was tightly cast at Fort William, under the close supervision of indigenous learned men like Mrityunjoy Vidyalankar.31 A sombre style, sonorous Sanskrit words and compound phrases, classical metaphors, unnatural syntax and unidiomatic rendering marked the works of most of these men. So pedantic and artificial was this language that it came to be ridiculed by most Bengalis as sahebi bangla.32 Between 1802 and 1852, a number of such works were written to serve as textbooks, particularly for the College.33
PPT NO 12: WILLIAM CAREY AND THE FORT WILLIAM COLLEGE CIRCLE The Fort William College texts served only a limited and a specifically European audience. But under the active patronage of the College and the intellectual needs generated by it, a number of peripheral and satellite institutions came up that had an important bearing on the cultural world of early nineteenth century Bengal. The Calcutta School Book Society (CSBS) established in 1817, and the School Book Society of 1818, were among the most prominent. The School Book Societies received the obvious patronage of the rulers. The managing committees included local intellectuals like Radhakanta Deb and Ramcomul Sen, but were dominated mostly by European officials and scholars. The bureaucratic elite of Fort William was particularly prominent.34 The CSBS also had close links with both the Committee of Public Instruction and the Council of Education, and from 1840 onwards supplied books to government schools.35 The object of these institutions was to aid pathshalas throughout Bengal by supplying textbooks to them at very cheap rates or even gratuitously. Till about 1835, these two organisations were the chief producers and publishers of vernacular school textbooks in Bengal. Their role was taken over by the Sanskrit Press of Vidyasagar in later years. The Christian Tract and Book Society (1823) and the Christian Vernacular Education Society (1857) were also organisations of this kind but supplied books chiefly to missionary aided vernacular schools.
Over the first half of the nineteenth century there was a gradual settling down of the earlier uncertainties in style, into a moderately sanskritised, lucid prose. Written in a style that was sanskritic Bengali, but much more lucid than the Fort William works, the School Society text books set the direction and tenor of literary Bengali prose writing. Europeans and Indians alike launched on the project of writing text books with equal vigour. The numerous presses that were coming up in Calcutta and its suburbs printed, published and sold thousands of these school books to students throughout Bengal. Many of these were also translated into Hindi and Oriya for use of schools in Bihar and Orissa, so that Bengali books could also be said to be guiding public education in these two states.36 Between 1832 and 1836, the distribution figures for the Society's books jumped from 52,243 to 123,844.37 Between 1866 and 1868 the number of Bengali books issuing from its various depositories all over Bengal had increased from 96,997 to 121,820.38 Under the close supervision of Vidyasagar himself, the Sanskrit Press and its depository till the 1860s marked the second major stage in the production of standardised school texts in Bengal.
By 1860s a standard Bengali purged of its syncretic associations and modelled strictly on Sanskrit had established itself. Participation of a nouveau riche and educated Hindu urban aristocracy in the process of reformation had shaped prose writing in the vernacular along these lines. Polite Bengali had essentially come into existence to serve the needs of this group, and defined itself in their terms. Linguistically and socially therefore, it sought to establish its domination over other variants of the language, and the social groups they represented.
‘Musalmani-bangla’: politics, religion and social agenda
PPT NO 13: RISE OF ‘ISLAMIC BENGALI’ FROM THE MID-19TH CENTURY ONWARDS
Literary historians trace the origins of ‘Muslim-bengali’ to the second half of the nineteenth century. Most hold that the term cannot be used to describe the Bengali of the late Mughal and even the early British period.39 The eminent linguist and literary historian, Sukumar Sen, believes that ‘Islamic-bengali’ was a creation of the 19th century, as elite Muslim Bengali poets before that had used – like their Hindu contemporaries - the standard courtly literary language in their compositions.40 The term that was used to describe the mixed lexicon of Persian and Arabic, together with some other words of non-indigenous origin - like Portuguese - in poetic compositions of the times was‘dobhashi’ (literally two languages).41 While this was not the standard language of ‘high’ literary writings, it was nevertheless employed occasionally to embellish and render life like certain themes and ideas. It was representative of an administrative and legal, as well as a living colloquial vocabulary.42 Linguistically, there does not appear to have been a clear distinction between ‘dobhashi Bangla’ and Muslim-bengali, except for an increased incidence of Perso-arabic words in the latter.’43
PPT NO 14: MIXED, SYNCRETIC TRADITIONS Songs based on local legends like those of Chandramukhi, Bhelua and Malua had been extremely popular in the region since medieval times. Usually tragic tales of love and betrayal, these were sung or performed by groups of itinerant musicians travelling the countryside. The ballads implicitly underlined the far more vibrant and ‘naturally’ syncretic nature of the Bengali language as witnessed in these songs.
There are, in fact, many instances of poets being at ease with both styles even later on.44 Saiyyid Hamza, one of the greatest writers of this genre in the eighteenth century, composed works in standard literary Bengali of his day. Muslim poets from the Roshang-Chittagong area, now in Bangladesh, maintained a pure sadhu style in their writing till as late as the beginning of the twentieth century, drawing clear distinctions with the Islamic-bengali style in their title-pages.45
Ordinary scribes and writers too were free-floating in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Thus Muslim scribes copied epics like the Ramayana for their own reading pleasure,46 while Hindu poets composed works such as the Imamener Kechha (the Imam’s tale) in the Jungnama (Holy War) tradition.47 Songs and panchalis of the folk-based syncretic pir (semi-divine religious teachers worshipped by both Muslims and Hindus) traditions such as those dedicated to Satyapir or Satyanarayan, Gazi Kalu and Manikpir, were composed in a lively East bengali dialect, with its naturalised share of Perso-arabic words, and intended for both Hindu and Muslim audiences. In their dialects and literary repertoire the pir-panchalis echoed the East Bengali ballads.48
British civil servants in Bengal in the 1870s testify to a harmonious existence between the two communities and shared life-styles.49 In fact, there was much more in common between the cultural lives, customs and practices of the lower social strata of Bengali society – both Hindus and Muslims – than there was within either the Hindu or Muslim community as a whole.50 They venerated the same pirs, believed in the same magical chants, shared the same names and dress, and Muslims even observed Hindu religious ceremonies like Diwali and Holi.51 Islamic leaders of medieval Bengal even resorted to packing the religious message for ordinary Muslims in more acceptable syncretic cultural idioms, such that there was only a ‘very thin line of distinction between the veneration of Hindu Gods and goddesses and the Islamic devotion to Allah’.52
Certain developments in the nineteenth century were responsible for the split that occurred in this largely secular, syncretic Bengali language. The abandoning of Persian as the official language of administration in 1839, and the recasting of Bengali in a sanskritistic mould under the influence of educated Hindus as we saw above, forced the language to look separate ways. The process was accelerated by the search for an ‘Islamic’ identity in the region from the 1870s onwards.
PPT NO 15: THE NASIHAT NAMAHS In British administrative records, Islamic-bengali was a language popularised by the Wahabi movement in lower Bengal in the late nineteenth century. W.W. Hunter, amateur ethnographer, and the oft-quoted author of the Indian Mussalmans, held that the firm hold that Islam had taken of lower Bengal had prompted the nurturing of a characteristic religious literature in the Islamic Bengali language. ‘The patois known as Mussalman Bengali’, he wrote, ‘is as distinct from the Urdu of Upper India, as the Urdu of North India is different from the Persian of Herat.’53
The end of the nineteenth century saw much opposition to ‘unIslamic’ local practices and printed nasihat namahs or manuals of religious instruction of the later reformists, worked hard to reverse the trend. Cheaply sold and in mass circulation, they purported to carry the ‘true’ message of Islam, urging Muslims to return to a more ‘Islamic’ code of conduct.54 By the start of the twentieth century, the syncretic practices of the countryside were on the decline. A contemporary noted this with some satisfaction in his memoirs.
Earlier Muslims used to participate in a lot of unIslamic recreations …. But then on Muslims stopped visiting Hindu households to watch yatras and hear panchali songs…. Hindus had also been used to receiving subscriptions from Muslims (for public entertainment) … on Hindu religious occasions. However, even these had stopped altogether in more recent times.55
Rafiuddin Ahmed is of the opinion that the attempt to fashion an ‘Islamic’ way of life, prompted the nasihat-namah authors to write in a Bengali peppered with Persian, Urdu and Arabic words. So great was the influence of the Perso-arabic vocabulary, that verbs were compounded out of Perso-arabic words, and even used as prefixes and suffixes. To further highlight the identification, the usual left to right pattern of the Bengali script was reversed to follow the Persian and Arabic style of writing from right to left. To maintain consistency, even the printed or manuscript pages of Musalmani-bengali works were bound in the opposite direction. The idea was to make what was seen to be a generally ‘un-Islamic’ language more acceptable as a medium of religious propaganda. This, Ahmed holds, was ‘in sharp contrast to the nasihat namahs of an earlier epoch, whose mode of expression was generally as ‘Bengali’ as the work of any contemporary Hindu author.’56 Linguists like Sen believe that 'Musalmani Bangla' was in fact the 'Maulvi's reply to the Pandit's sadhubhasha of the early and middle part of the nineteenth century.'57 Resentment was expressed at the higher levels of Muslim society as well. Even though they desisted from promoting the nasihat-namah brand of Bengali, official sources reported Muslims reacting to the highly sanskritised school texts in the 1870s, and an alleged 'Hinduisation' of the literary Bengali language.58
Educated Muslims, however, were disdainful of this pidgin Bengali, and condemned them to the realm of ‘battala puthis’.59 So concerted was the elite opposition that official efforts to invent an exclusive language for the Muslims of Bengal on the basis of Musalmani-bengali fell through as elite Bengali Muslims considered it to be inappropriate for use in genteel society.60 For the elite Bengali Muslims had always identified with Persian, Arabic or Urdu, rather than Bengali, which was perceived as the language of the masses. The linguistic divide was thus split along lines of class, rather than religion.
While religious sentiments and official propaganda coalesced to label the once syncretic Bengali as ‘Islamic’ or ‘Musalmani’, the sanskritised version of the vernacular secured for itself an unmistakably Hindu essence. The institution of such communal divides represented not just a passing phase in the history of the vernacular. Apart from shaping the separatist destinies of the two communities in Bengal in the post-independence era, their indelible impact can be seen in current manifestations of the language in Bangladesh, and West Bengal today.
1 See the works of Anisuzzaman, Purano Bangla Gadya; Qazi Abdul Mannan, The Emergence and Development of Dobhashi Literature in Bengal; M.A. Qayyum, A Critical Study; Afia Dil, Two Traditions of the Bengali Language (Cambridge, 1991); and Ghulam Murshid, Kalantare Bangla Gadya.
2 Both Rafiuddin Ahmed and Joya Chatterji refer to similar processes of communalisation of cultural identities in Bengal during the period, although neither deals explicitly with print-languages. See Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided; Rafiuddin Ahmed, Bengal Muslims.
3 James Long, A Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works, first edn. 1855, reprinted in Dinesh Chandra Sen, Bangla Bhasha O Sahitya (Calcutta, 1950). Long described it 'as a mixture of Urdu and Bengali, very popular among Muslims in Calcutta and Dacca.'
4 J. Long, Returns Relating to Publications in the Bengali Language in 1857, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, vol. xxxii (Calcutta, 1859), pp. xxx-xi.
5 'On the use of a foreign language in the Indian courts of judicature', Friend of India, Quarterly Magazine (1821), p. 386.
6 C.W. Bolton, Report on the Publications Issued and Registered in the Several Provinces of British India During the Year 1878, Selections from the Records of the Government of India, vol. clix (Calcutta, 1879), p. 138.
7 The work concerned was Saisabsiksha by Munshi Kazimuddin. See Chundernath Bose, Report on the Bengal Library for the year 1884 and 1885, p. 7.
8 Preface to Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamalalay (1823), reprinted in Sanat Kumar Gupta (ed), Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyayer Rasarachanasamagra (Calcutta, 1987), henceforth BBR, p. 3. For an interesting sociolinguistic analysis of this work, also see Hans Harder, ‘The Modern Babu and the Metropolis: Reassessing Early Bengali Narrative Prose, (1821-1862)’ in Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia (eds), India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century (Permanent Black: New Delhi, 2004), pp. 379-84.
9 Amitava Mukherjee holds that rural migrants to the city of Calcutta in the nineteenth century regarded it as only a workplace and continued to be dominated by their non-urban mentalities. See Amitava Mukherjee, Unish Shataker Samaj O Samskriti (Calcutta, 1971), p. 9.
10 For an account of his life and career see Abul Qashem Chaudhury, Bangla Sahitye Samajik Naksha, pp. 211-17
11 Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamalalay, pp. 9-10. Bhabanicaran also wrote sketches caricaturing this class in the Nabababubilas (1823), reprinted in Sanat Kumar Gupta, BBR.
12 Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamalalay, pp. 23-4, 26-7.
13 It is interesting that the language Bhabanicharan himself employed in his writings was always chaste, sanskritised Bengali, even for the most sensational themes. See both his Nabababubilas and Nababibibilas (1831), depicting the corruption of the babu’s women, in Sanat Kumar Gupta, BBR..
14 Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamalalay, pp. 10-13.
15 Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamalalay, pp. 13-14. In 1823 a letter to the editor of the Samachar Darpan also distinguished between different languages being used in different forms of conversation. Here too the distinction is between the public world of material (bishoyi) affairs, and more private domain as at ritual bathing grounds, or leisurely conversation with friends, Hindostanic and Sanskritic languages being used on respective occasions. Samachar Darpan (22 February, 1823), in B.N. Bandyopadhyay, Samvadpatre Sekaler Katha, vol. 2, p. 57.
16 Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamalalay, p. 14.
17 N.B. Halhed, A Grammar of Bengal Language (Hooghly, 1778), p. 178.
18 Joshua Marshman, Hints Relating to Native Schools (Serampore, 1816), p. 10. He even mentions the establishing of a 'Normal school' in Serampore where school teachers were being trained in the correct forms of the language under their (the missionaries) 'own eye'.
19 In one of his working papers, Halhed thus changes bir (brave) to beer in keeping with the sanskrit original veer. See OIOC Add. 5660F, fol. 16. In his Vocabulary too, Forster attempted to provide wherever he could, the 'correct' Sanskrit orthography, while recording the 'vitiated' version alongside. See H.P. Forster, A Vocabulary in Two Parts, English and Bengali and Vice Versa, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1799), p. ii.
20 Of these the most prolific author was Henry Pitts Forster, who translated 14 legal texts between 1794 and 1809. See H.P. Forster, Bengal Translations of Regulations (Calcutta, 1795-1809). Also see N.B. Edmonstone, Bengal Translations of Regulations (Calcutta, 1791-92). It has been suggested that purely profit motive might have driven these men to augment their meagre writer's salary. These were extremely well paid commissionings. The Company itself bought 100 copies of each work, averaging a price of 100-150 rupees each. Jonathan Duncan is believed to have earned fifteen thousand rupees through his translations. See Ghulam Murshid, Kalantare Bangla Gadya: Oupanibeshik Amale Gadyer Rupantar (Calcutta, 1992), p. 102.
21 Murshid quotes two extracts from the works of H. P. Forster in 1794 and 1801, to show how within just seven years, the proportion of Perso-arabic words to the rest of the vocabulary dropped remarkably from 39 and 14 per cent respectively. G. Murshid, Kalantare Bangla Gadya, pp. 181-82.
22 Sisir K. Das, Early Bengali Prose: Carey to Vidyasagar (Calcutta, 1966), pp. 45-8.
23 Suniti Kumar Chatterji, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1926), p. 134. More recent researches of Sisir Das, Anisuzzaman, Debesh Roy and Pradyumna Bhattacharya, have shown how grammatical and rhetorical models borrowed from modern European languages shaped the 'standard' forms of modern Bengali prose. See Sisir K. Das, Early Bengali Prose; Anisuzzaman, Purano Bangla Gadya (Dacca, 1984); Debesh Roy, Upanibesher Samaj O Bangla Samvadik Gadya: Unish Shataker Prathamardha Niye Kichhu Anuman (Calcutta, 1990).
24 Pradyumna Bhattacharya, 'Rammohun Roy o bangla gadya', Baromas, 11, 2 (April 1990).
25 See H.P. Forster, A Vocabulary in Two Parts, English and Bengali and Vice Versa, 2 vols. (Calcutta, 1799-1801).
26 G. C. Haughton's Rudiments of Bengali Grammar appeared in 1821. It was followed soon after by the classic, Gaudiya Bhashar Vyakaran, in 1833, by Rammohun Roy. In 1847, Reverend William Yates' Introduction to the Bengali Language was published in two volumes, the first of which contained a grammar, a reader and explanatory notes with an index and a vocabulary, and the second, extracts from contemporary Bengali literature. Ramcomul Sen's dictionary in English and Bengali issued from the Serampore press in 1834.
27 N.B. Halhed, A Grammar of the Bengal Language, pp. xi-xii, xxi-xxii. On it was based William Carey's A Dictionary of the Bengalee Language, published in two volumes, in 1818 and 1825, respectively.
28 Rosane Rocher, Orientalism, Poetry and the Millenium (Delhi, 1983), p. 77.
29 See William Carey, A Grammar, first edn.; and G.C. Haughton, Rudiments of Bengali Grammar (London, 1821).
30 Between the years 1817 and 1821 alone, Serampore Press had printed for the Calcutta School Book Society 47,946 copies of twelve works in English, Bengali, Anglo-bengali, Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit. G.A. Grierson, 'The early publications of the Serampore missionaries: a contribution to Indian bibliography', Indian Antiquary, 32 (June 1903), pp. 241-54.
31 These early texts were often sites of conflict between the old and new styles. Even while joining the mainstream movement in stamping out 'vulgar' language, the Mission Press at Serampore during the early decades of the nineteenth century, published many books and journals from its own press, whose language and content were not quite in keeping with acceptable standards. Many of the works, although written in a predominantly sadhu style, reflect an inclination for the colloquial. (Subject matter of my forthcoming article, ‘Sahibs, pundits, Munshis and babus: transforming the vernacular in colonial Bengal’)
32 Mrityunjoy's prose form Hitopodesa, quoted above, can be taken as typical. The term came to be coined in contemporary parlance to slight the excessive and unnatural dependence of early British writers of Bengali, on their Sanskrit pundits. See for instance, a report by a local missionary in J. Wenger (ed.), 'Papers concerning the Bengali version of the Scriptures', Calcutta Auxilliary Bible Society, p. 12. He thought that the 'peculiar idiom' of this style 'repulses the people'.
33 A list of Bengali works patronised by Fort William College was provided by James Long in 1859. See James Long, Returns Relating to Publications in the Bengali language in 1857, Selections From the Records of the Bengal Government, vol. xxxii (Calcutta, 1859), Appendix E, p. 78. For a complete list of Bengali works printed and published from the Serampore Press between 1800 and 1834, see Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, Bangla Sahityer Itibritta, pp. 419-24.
34 Men like W. B. Bayley, W. H. Macnaughten, Holt Mackenzie, George Swinton, Thomas Fortesque and H. T. Prinsep, for instannce. See David Kopf, British Orientalism, pp. 154-55.
35 See Thirteenth Report of the CSBS (1840-44).
36 Chundernath Bose, Report on the Bengal Library for 1884-1885, p. 8.
37 Twelfth Report of the CSBS (1836-39), pp. 21-2.
38 General Report on Public Instruction, 1868-1869.
39 E. Huq, Muslim-bengali Literature (Karachi, 1957), p. 174.
40 He holds there were three major centres of Islamic-bengali writing between the 17th and 19th centuries – North Bengal, Chittagong, and Hooghly. See Sukumar Sen, Islami Bangla Sahitya, p. 43.
41 The Nadia court poet Bharatchandra in his Mansingha Kavya (1752) uses the term ‘dobhashi Bangla’ to describe such a mixed language. Enamul Huq, Muslim-bengali Literature, p. 174.
42 Works like the Manasa Mangal of Bipradas Piplai (1493), Chandi Mangal of Kabikankan (1576), and Dharma Mangal of Ghanaram (1709), thus strategically employ the dobhashi style. This is a pattern repeated in later writers like Saiyyid Humza (1742-1806). Thus Humza composed works like Madhumalati in standard literary Bengali, resorting to dobhashi only when the need arose to discuss Islamic ways of life. Enamul Huq, Muslim-bengali Literature, p. 185.
43 Huq uses both terms simultaneously before going on to describe Islamic-bengali as ‘a creation of the British period’.
Enamul Huq, Muslim-bengali Literature, p. 174.
44 Thus Sabirid Khan, writing in the latter part of the century, had a varied repertoire, and even used Sanskrit shlokas in his work. While Vidyasundar and Rasul Vijay are in sanskritised Bengali, Hanif o Kayra Pari is in simple but elegant medieval Bengali. Enamul Huq, Muslim-bengali Literature, p. 68.
45 This was despite the Chittagong Muslims maintaining close links with the Urdu speaking north-western part of India, although the relationship did express itself strongly in other areas, such as the retention of a variant of the kaithi script in the region until the mid-19th century. Sukumar Sen, Islami Bangla Sahitya, pp. 43-4.
46 Shaikh Jamal Muhammed declares that he had undertaken the task of copying the Stri and Adi (and probably also Asrama) Parvas, certain episodes from the epic, Ramayana, between 1773 and 1774, for purposes of his own reading. See J. F. Blumhardt, Catalogue of Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali BL Mss Add. 5595.
47 The author was Radhacharan Gop of Birbhum. Sukumar Sen, Islami Bangla Sahitya, p. 48.
48 See Dinesh Sen, Eastern Bengal Ballads. As late as the 1920s they were still sung in eastern Bengal by professional groups of Muslim and low-caste Hindu singers. See Dusan Zbavitel, Bengali Folk Ballads from Mymensingh and the Problem of their Authenticity (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1963), pp. 133-41.
49 Henry Beveridge, The District of Bakarganj: Its History and Statistics (London, 1876), p. 211.
50 Rafiuddin Ahmed has amply proved the thesis for Muslim society in Bengal by highlighting the divisions between the high and low – the ashrafs and atrafs - in the nineteenth century. See Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims: A Quest for Identity (1871-1906) (New Delhi, 1998).
51 Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, see chapters 2 and 3.
52 Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, p. 86. Also see chapter 4. For an account of such writings see, Enamul Huq, Muslim Bangla Sahitya (Dacca, 1969), pp. 66-9, 71-3, 140-210.
53 Enamul Huq, Muslim-bengali Literature, p. 174.
54 One such work printed in 1876 complained how Muslims were followers of Islam in as much as they wore caps and consumed beef. In all other respects – in worshipping pirs, Bishohori and Kali – they were most unIslamic. They did not even read the kalema (Koran?). It was in the hope of correcting these corrupt practices that he had translated an old puthi into Bengali. See Maulvi Abdul Majid, Chhohi Emamsagar (Calcutta: Gyanollash Press, 1876), p. 245.
55 Ibn Majuddin Ahmed, Amar Sansar Jiban: Islamer Jibanta Prabhab (Riaz-ul-Islam Press: Calcutta, 1914), p. 116.
56 Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, p. 91. Also see Q. A. M. Mannan, The Emergence and Development of Dobhashi Literature in Bengal Upto 1855 A. D. (Dacca, 1956), chapters 1-4; J.C. Ghosh, Bengali Literature (London: OUP, 1948), p. 82.
57 S. K. Chatterji, Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1926), p. 211.
58 Report on the Administration of Bengal, 1871-1872, p. 255.
59 Muhammad Naimuddin, Zubdat-al-Masail, I (Calcutta, 1873), pp. 1-2, cited in Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, p. 90.
60 Bengal Education Proceedings, 1873, p. 29.
