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Should we make a Petition to change the Devanagari script of Bangla!?

Are we ready for this? Will you support the Bangladesh people for this CHANGE?


  • Total voters
    123
"Jelly young man"?

Why, @LoveIcon, why? and why is my ID becoming darker day by day? Please explain. When someone like you has such an opinion, I worry.

Vote for the change of script otherwise Mrs.Shearer is going to be told everything about Mr.Shearer's crush on a certain Ms.Balan ! :whistle:

How are you doing janaab ? :)
 
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Vote for the change of script otherwise Mrs.Shearer is going to be told everything about Mr.Shearer's crush on a certain Ms.Balan ! :whistle:

How are you doing janaab ? :)

That's blackmail!

Where are the mods when we really need them??

I was fine till I read this. Where did those damn' nitroglycerin pills go?
 
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it is up to individuals to decide what they want to do. people should at least be aware of the importance of Urdu in the land we call Bangladesh. all of those pre-1947 leaders from Bengal who can be likened to "founding fathers" associated themselves with Urdu at least as much as Bengali. and a language like Urdu determined the very Muslim community of South Asia that culminated into two countries we call Bangladesh and Pakistan today, and a big minority population of India. Urdu still is the lingua franca of south asian Muslims - Urdu-Hindi together are probably a lingua franca of almost all people from what is considered "indo-aryan" background
this chick has major identity insecurities....
 
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what has insecurities? do you actually have anything to add to the discussion?
Like you are adding to this joke of a thread?......whats next? you should open a thread to impose a ban on lungi since since its not islamic enough....
 
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@Joe Shearer we had an interesting discussion going. Unfortunately I got a bit tied up. I will get back to it as soon as time permits.
 
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@Joe Shearer we had an interesting discussion going. Unfortunately I got a bit tied up. I will get back to it as soon as time permits.

It was your discussion, your game-changing input; I only read the cited book greedily and reacted to a fine piece of scholarship by Eaton.

Get back soon, please.
 
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For all muslims (including me) religion comes first:angel:

For Indian muslims nation come first :angel:

if Bengali nationalism is concerned with pride in the heritage of Bengal, then the languages that have enriched and shaped this region and its people must be celebrated. in that case, you cannot simply exclude only certain languages of the region just because they were brought there by Muslims. if you want to exclude languages like Urdu and Farsi and Arabic and scripts from these languages, then call your nationalism Hindu-Bangaliyana Nationalism.

urdu is not ur mother tongue u dimwit ofcourse i can exclude them...if u guys had all moved to farsi and arabic by now i would have had no say in this matter but as u are not then it is an issue ....AND BY SAYING THAT YOU CANNOT EXCLUDE URDU for Allahs sake urdu of all languages,the language against u guys fought to save bengali in 1971 shows how much your mindset and nationalism has degraded
 
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Dimwit? I don't think you've read @khair_ctg's repertory of messages. It isn't easy to agree with him, but he usually has a point to make, which is not entirely devoid of merit. Definitely not dimwitted, but that is my personal opinion. And definitely calling him a dimwit, whether or not he is one, is a bit much.
 
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maybe i said a bit too much...no offence if i have hurt any one ...my apologies
 
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I was just pointing to his intelligent posts, nothing more. I am not his vakalatnama-holder, so don't worry. These are just a personal commentary, not to be taken at all seriously. Honestly, I think some of them have a very, very good grip on these socio-cultural language issues.

Anyway, as long as he doesn't complain, you shouldn't worry.
 
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Bengali language phrases | History Of Bangla Language | Bengali literature history | Academic Room

Bangla Language | Bengali Literary History

rabindranath-tagore.png

by Thibaut d'Hubert, The University of Chicago

Bengali literature developed in the northeastern part of the Indian subcontinent in about the eighth/fourteenth century, when Bengali, also called Bangla, became a literary language. After 739/1338 Bengal was an independent sultanate ruled by Turko-Afghan elites based in the urban centres. Starting from 983/1575 the region was then progressively integrated into the Mughal empire and was entirely conquered in 1010/1610. During the late Mughal period (12th/18thcentury) the province became virtually autonomous. Bengal came under British control during the second half of the 12th/18th century. After the independence of 1947, the region was divided on a religious basis between the Indian state of West Bengal and East Pakistan. The war of 1971 led to the independence of East Pakistan that became the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

It is often claimed that Muslim patronage ushered Bengali poetry into being. There is little evidence of such courtly literature before the tenth/sixteenth century. Before the elaboration of an Islamic literature, the works of Hindu poets contained elements reflecting aspects of Islam in the regional culture, such as references to the sultan of the time or to characters inspired by stories from the early history of Islam. Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, the grandsons of the prophet Muḥammad, for example, are treated by the poets as Muslim rulers forced to celebrate the cult of Manasā, the goddess of the snakes, in early maṅgalakāvyas (c. ninth/fifteenth century), narrative poems that celebrate the spread of the worship of a deity. Arabic and Persian vocabulary, related mainly to religion and professional activities practised by Muslims in Bengal, is also found in texts from this period.

1. The beginning of Bengali Muslim literature in eastern Bengal
The first Bengali Muslim authors appear to have lived in the southeastern corner of Bengal, in the region of Chittagong. They were either Afghans culturally acclimated to Bengal, who used Bengali as a means of literary expression, or local Hindus recently converted to Islam. The sultanate (600–945/1204–1538) and the Afghan period (945–83/1538–75) saw the beginnings of a courtly culture that gradually integrated regional features, among which were the use of Bengali as a cultural language. But it was only in the Arakanese kingdom, which stretched along the coasts of southeastern present-day Bangladesh and the northwestern part of Myanmar, that regional Muslim elites of the cities and rural areas used Bengali for literary purposes. The language and prosody were the same as that of earlier and contemporary Hindu poets. Changes occurred mainly in the themes, which were now taken from Persian literature, and through the creation or reinterpretation of existing literary forms. Unlike the Urdū poets, Bengali authors never adopted Arabic-Persian prosody. There were occasional late (thirteenth/nineteenth-century) attempts to use the Arabic script to transcribe Bengali. Formally speaking, the only visible impact of an Islamicate literary culture on Bengali was the practice of arranging the pages of manuscripts or printed books in order to read them from right to left.

The first author to leave a substantial oeuvre whose date and geographical location can be firmly established is Sayyid Sulṭān, who lived at the end of the tenth/sixteenth century. He was a rural religious figure who produced many texts in Bengali, in a wide range of literary forms, from narrative poems called pańchālī to short lyric poems (pada). He is representative of the religious mind of the rural gentry of the late tenth/sixteenth century. During this period, Islam spread primarily among rural populations. Even in religious writings, the language was largely the same as that of Hindu poets. Sayyid Sulṭān's Nabīvaṇsha (“The line of the Prophets,” c. 992–4/1584–6) and his treatise on spiritual practices entitled Jñānapradīpa (“The lamp of knowledge”) contain many elements borrowed directly from Hindu mythology and yoga. These are usually reinterpreted in order to fit the framework of Islamic theology. Sulṭān's sources are Arabic and Persian texts, which he does not name precisely. His audience seems to have been the rural populations of Chittagong newly converted to Islam.

Sulṭān's works strongly influenced authors who lived in Chittagong during the eleventh/seventeenth and twelfth/eighteenth centuries. His disciple Muḥammad Khān is a major figure among those authors. His works were read in Chittagong and the neighbouring region of Comilla. He completed the narrative of his master with his Maqtūl Ḥusayn (“Ḥusayn slaughtered,” c. 1056/1646), an epic and elegiac poem on the death of the Prophet's grandson at the battle of Karbalāʾ (Muḥarram 61/October 680). Muḥammad Khān was also the first Muslim author to compose an allegorical poem, the Satya Kalivivādasaṇvāda (“The disputation between the Golden and the Iron Ages,” 1045/1635). We find few references in these texts to the political context in which they were composed.

Another important literary trend of the Muslim Bengali literature of this period is linked to the prolific man of letters ʿAlāwal (Ālāol, fl. 1061–82/1651–71). Unlike Sayyid Sulṭān, ʿAlāwal was an urban poet, who wrote for wealthy Muslim dignitaries of the Buddhist kings of Arakan. His texts are all transpositions from eastern literary Hindī, also called Avadhī (e.g., Muḥammad Jāyasī's Padmāvat, 952/1545), and Persian (e.g., Niẓāmī Ganjawī's Haft paykar, 593/1197) into Bengali. We can draw the outlines of his literary career from information available in his works. His poetry is refined and erudite. In addition to the ethical and religious concerns evidenced in his texts, he provides valuable insights into the courtly culture of his time. The most striking feature is the integration of Sanskrit, Hindī, Persian, and Bengali literary traditions in a single adab or cultural ethos adapted to the needs of the cosmopolitan environment of Mrauk U, the capital of the Arakanese kingdom. Even after the conquest of Chittagong by the Mughals, in 1077/1666, ʿAlāwal's texts were widely distributed and read in the region. He remained the model of a court poet, and many authors composed pańchālīs inspired by Persian mathnawīs, using his highly Sanskritised style.

In the northeastern regions of Comilla and Sylhet, Bengali literature developed in a way similar to that in Chittagong, but there were few explicit interactions, in terms of the circulation of texts, among the three regions. Shaykh Chānd (ca 1059–1137/1650–1725) was a major author in Comilla, which was part of the Tripura kingdom ruled by the Hindu dynasty of the Māńikyas. He played a role comparable to Sayyid Sulṭān, by providing the rural readership with a voluminousRasulacarita (“Life of the prophets”) and Ṣūfī treatises such as the Ṭālib-nāma (“The book of the seeker”). Judging from the many manuscripts of his texts collected in Comilla, Shaykh Chānd remained very popular until the beginning of the twentieth century.

In the region of Sylhet, a quasi-autonomous tradition is traceable from the twelfth/eighteenth century. A script found only there, the Sylhet nāgarī, was designed by Muslim copyists. The genres represented are the same as in Comilla and Chittagong, that is, lives of the prophets, treatises on spiritual practices and fiqh, and padas.

2. Muslim Bengali literature in West Bengal
Even though Chittagong literature circulated in print in Calcutta during the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, another tradition prevailed among the Muslims of the western part of Bengal. In the mid-twelfth/eighteenth century, Shāh Gharīballāh (ca 1165–93/1772–80) composed texts on themes already existing in East Bengal, such as the battle of Karbalāʾ and the story of Laylī and Majnūn. He does not seem to have been familiar with the Chittagong versions of these stories, and his sources were Persian or Hindī texts. His idiom differs from that used in eastern Bengal. It contains Hindī and Persian words and expressions and was later referred to as Musulmani Bengali, dobhāśī (“containing two languages”), ormishrabhāśārīti (“style of the mixed language”). The direct successor of Shāh Gharīballāh, Sayyid Ḥamza (ca 1144–1222/1732–1808), shifted from the Sanskritised idiom to that of his predecessor, whose epic poem Amīr Ḥamza he completed in 1201 of the Bengali calendar (c. 1209/1794). The dobhāśī literature was very popular, and many texts were distributed from Baťťalā, in northern Calcutta, where cheap books were printed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Another successful kind of text that developed with the advent of printing was the literature on Satya Pīr, a mythical saint worshiped by Hindus and Muslims alike for his ability to bring wealth and comfort. Many manuscripts containing versions of the tales about this religious figure are also kept in the collections of West Bengal and Bangladesh.

3. The formation of modern Bengali Muslim literature in colonial Bengal
During the second half of the nineteenth century, some authors who wished to enter the literary circles of Calcutta adopted the new idiom and genres of the Hindu literati. At this time, Western forms such as the novel and the use of prose, and sonnet and blank verse in poetry, as well as the direct expression of social concerns changed profoundly the way literature was conceived. Premodern forms have continued in use up to the present, but a break did occur between the ancient and the new tradition. The late integration of Bengali Muslims into the British educational system limited the impact of Muslim authors on the intellectual life of Bengal. The religious themes inherited from the dobhāśī literature were still the main sources of inspiration for many Muslim poets and novelists. Mīr Musharraf Ḥusayn (1848–1911) is the most important author of this period. He tried all the genres of his time and wrote an autobiography that is a landmark in Bengali literature. Muslim authors also wrote plays, such as Mīr Musharraf Ḥusayn's Vasantakumārī nāťak (“The play of Vasantakumārī,” 1873), ʿAbd al-Karīm's Jagatmohinī (“The world-enchanting,” 1875), and Qādir ʿAlī's Mohinīpremapāsh(“Mohinī's love-lace,” 1881). The plays were fashioned according to the rules of Sanskrit dramaturgy and imitated contemporary Hindu playwrights (e.g., Dīnabandhu's (1829–1874) Nīl darpańa, (“The indigo planting mirror,” 1860), and Ḥusain's Jamidār darpańa, (“The mirror of the landlord,” 1873)).

Bengali Muslims engaged in the publication of several periodicals in the late nineteenth and the twentieth century. Periodicals such as Kohinūr (“The mountain of light,” named after a famous Indian diamond, which belonged to various rulers and is now part of British crown jewels), first published in 1898, allowed men of letters and intellectuals to share their points of view and to debate topics in literature, religion, politics, and the complex question of the identity of Bengali Muslims. The need of Muslims to acknowledge their role as members of Bengali society in order to enhance social unity and offset divisive British social policy became a central issue for the essayists. The editors were Muslims, but many contributors were Hindus. In the field of religion, the efforts of Muslim authors were directed mainly towards refuting anti-Muslim pamphlets written by Christian missionaries. In this connection, some Hindu and Brahmo (members of a religious reformist movement formed by the urban elites of Bengal during the first half of the 19th century) scholars produced valuable works on Islam, such as the first Bengali translation of the Quʾrān, in 1881, by Girishchandra Sen (1834–1910). The latter also wrote a life of the Prophet entitled Mahāpuruś Muhammader jīvan-carit (“The life of the great man Muḥammad,” 1885). The many biographies of the Prophet written during the second half of the nineteenth century helped shape the identity of Bengali Muslims by providing iconic models of individual behaviour.

The opinions of Sunni reformist movements of various tendencies such as the Deobandī, the regional Farāʾiḍī or the Barelwī, had some influence on the ideology of the writers of essays and other nonfiction of this period, but novelists and poets seem to have maintained their autonomy, putting forward such issues as the social status of women, education, and child marriage.

During the decades preceding the independence of India and Pakistan, the poet and songwriter Qāḍī Nadhr al-Islām (Kazi Nazrul Islam, 1899–1976) became a major figure. He was inspired by Hindu devotional songs and by adaptations of the Persian poems of Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī (c. 715–92/1315–90). The energy generated by the uprising that is the theme of his famous poem Vidrohī (“The rebel,” 1922) is a crucial aspect of his art and inspired many poets who came after him.

4. Bengali literature in Pakistan and Bangladesh
The formation of a new Bengali Muslim identity resulted from the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. On the one hand, Bengali Muslims gained the opportunity to elaborate their own literary idiom, distinct from that of Hindus, but on the other, Urdū, not Bengali, was the official language of Pakistan. Other social and political issues crystallised around that of the recognition of the status of Bengali as a national language in Pakistan by the government. This led to the “movement for the language” (bhāśā āndolan) and its violent repression in 1952, vividly depicted in Jahira Rayhāna's (Ẓahīr Rayḥān's) novel Āreka phālguna (“Another month of Phālgun, ”1969, Phālgun being the twelfth month of the North Indian Hindu calendar, falling in February–March). Important novelists of this period are Abū al-Manṣūr Aḥmad (1898–1979), Abū Isḥāq (1926–2003), Akbar Ḥusayn (1917–81), Qāḍī Afsār al-Dīn (1921–75), Abū Rushd (b. 1919), Shawkat ʿUthmān (1917–98), and Sayyid Walīallāh (1922–1971), whose Lālasālu(“Tree without roots,” 1948) is an emblematic novel of this period. It tells the story of a religious man who settles in a village and relies for his living upon the villagers' beliefs in the power of the tomb of a local saint. Depictions of rural society and the criticism of superstitions are often encountered in the literature of the years that followed partition. The movement for the recognition of the Bengali language produced a new creative impulse that lasted until 1958, when martial law was imposed by Iskander Mirza (1899–1969) and Ayyub Khan (1907–74).

The latter's strict military regime of the 1960s prohibited novelists from freely depicting contemporary society. Many East Pakistani historical novels were aimed at condemning the ill-treatment endured by Bengalis. Authors evincing strong Marxist ideology, such as ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Chaudhurī (1934-), who wrote Chandradvīpera upākhyāna (“The story of Chandradvīpa”) during the 1950s and published it as book in 1960, and the bold and prolific novelist Satyen Sen (1907–81), or Shawkat ʿUthmān (1919–98), the author of Krītadāsera hāsi(“The slave's laughter,” 1962), nourished the revolutionary imaginary on the path to independence. But when the moment of the fight for independence arrived in the late 1960s, it was through poetry that a real aesthetics of the uprising, already present in the work of Nadhr al-Islām, reached its fullest development. Svādhīnatā tumi (“Freedom, you are…,” 1972) by Shams al-Raḥmān (Shamsur Rahman) (1929–2006) is the most acclaimed poem on independence. The celebration of the 21 February, the date of the general strike of 1952 for the recognition of Bengali as a national language, remains an occasion for poets to declaim their compositions inspired by the fight for independence.

The post-independence period produced many novels and anthologies of poems on the theme of the war of 1971. Novels such as Anvar Pāshā's (1928–71) Rāiphela roṭi āorāta(“Guns, bread, and women,” 1973), Shawkat ʿUthmān'sJahannama haite bidāya (“A farewell to Hell,” 1971), Shawkat ʿAlī's (1936-) Yātrā on the “black night” of 25 March 1971, Sayyid Shams al-Ḥaq's Niśiddha lobana (“The forbidden salt,” 1981) are examples of this trend. Among the writers of the 1970s and 1980s, two women novelists are prominent, Selinā Ḥusayn (b. 1947) and Rijiyā Raḥmān (b. 1939). Among the works of the latter is Vaṇ theke Bāṇlā (“From the Vaṃ-s to Bengal,” 1987), an historical novel dealing with the history of the Bengali people from ancient times to 1971.

Even though rural life has remained central to the setting of Bengali novels and poetry up to the present, the urban social environment increasingly influenced authors living in Dacca. The use of dialect in the dialogues of short stories and novels is characteristic of recent Bangladeshi literature. Humāyūn Aḥmad (b. 1948) and Imdād al-Ḥaq Milan (b. 1955) are two prolific and popular authors of the last decades who draw on contemporary events for their short stories and novels. Al-Maḥmūd (b. 1936) is recognised by critics for his poetry, short stories, and, since the 1990s, his novels.

Bibliography

Abedin Quader (ed.), An anthology of modern literature from Bangladesh, Dacca 1985

Ahmed Sharif, Bāṅālī o baṅlā sāhitya, 2 vol., repr. Dacca 2003–4

Amit Dey, The image of the Prophet in Bengali Muslim piety, 1850–1947, Calcutta 2005

Ānisujjāmāna, Muslima mānasa o bāṇlā sāhitya, repr. Dacca 2001

Asim Roy, The Islamic syncretistic tradition in Bengal, Princeton 1983

Mahbubula Alama, Bāṇlādeshera sāhitya, Dacca 2009

Priti Kumar Mitra, The dissent of Nazrul Islam, New Delhi 2007

Qazi Abdul Mannan, The emergence and development of Dobhāsī literature in Bengal, up to 1855 A.D., Dacca 1966

Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, 1871–1906. A quest for identity, New Delhi 1981

Rafiuddin Ahmed (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims. Interpretative essays, New Delhi 2001

Richard M. Eaton, The rise of Islam and the Bengal frontier, 1204–1760, Berkeley 1993

Shamsur Rahman, The best poems of Shamsur Rahman, trans. Shankar Sen, Calcutta 2005

Sufia M. Uddin, Constructing Bangladesh. Religion, ethnicity, and language in an Islamic nation, Chapel Hill 2006

Syed Waliullah, Tree without roots, trans. Qaisar Saeed, Anna-Marie Thibaud, Jeffrey Gibian, and Malik Khayyam, London 1967

Tony K. Stewart (trans.), Fabulous females and peerless pīrs. Tales of mad adventure in old Bengal, Oxford and New York 2004.

Bengali

by James M. Wilce, Northern Arizona University

People often make particular linguistic variants straightforward indexes of identity. This lacks analytic validity but reveals the linguistic ideologies upon which the politics of nationalism often turn (Bauman and Briggs 2003). Following Stewart (2001), we should be cautious of modern notions that linguistic form (e.g., Bengali discourse full of Sanskrit- or Perso-Arabic-derived words) directly reflects an author's politico-religious stance or a Hindu or Muslim identity conceived as a pure essence.

Ask Bangladeshis what divides Muslim from Hindu speech and they will mention pani (vs. jɔl) ‘water’. This favorite index actually derives from Sanskrit. Yet, the ‘Muslim’ valeur of pani is a social fact. Such facts warrant attention to ideological representations of ‘Perso-Arabic’ lexemes in Bengali – and suggest that lists of loanwords require reanalysis in terms of ideologies.

1. Semantic domains
The semantic categories of Arabic loanwords in Bengali reveal the history of Bengali Islam. “The ordinary Bengali words for ‘paper’ kagɔj (Arabic kaġaḏ) and ‘pen’ kɔlɔm (Arabic qalam) [are] both… corrupted loanwords” (Eaton 1993: 293). Muslims spread literacy in Bengal, and associated terms reflect that fact.

Bengali Muslim kin terms are also mostly Arabic. Muslims usually call fathers abba; Hindus use baba. Some loanwords like mullah or imām designate Muslim social categories or reflect institutions of Mughal governance, e.g. the (now honorific) title qāḍī (kāzī). Then there are labels designating high birth – sayyid, šex, ašraf – which played a significant role in Bengal's social history (Ahmed 1981). Bengali Muslims use different honorifics from Hindus, e.g. šaheb(like ‘Mister’). Muslim names are also typically Arabic. The 19th-century Islamization of Bengal involved rural Muslims rejecting their ‘Hindu’ (Bengali) names (Ahmed 1981:106).

Other salient loanwords denote ritual acts – e.g. ḥajj. In late 20th century Dhaka, Bengali newspapers were peppered with such terms; their use peaks during Ramadan. Musa (1995:93) lists 28, including axeri munajat ‘final prayer’, id mobārak ‘happy Id’, zakāt ‘alms’,janāza ‘funeral prayer’, and mīlād mahfil ‘gathering to celebrate [the Prophet's] birth’.

2. Phonology and grammatical categories of loanwords
Phonological nativization of loanwords has been the rule in the past. Arabic /a/ in unstressed syllables has followed Bengali rules of vowel harmony to become /o/ in syllables preceding a high vowel (/u/ or /i/). Arabic consonants were generally replaced with their closest Bengali counterparts. The spelling of Arabic-derived terms has recently undergone ‘reform’. The Islamic Preaching Mission, once the Toblig Jamat, is now the Tablig Jamayat; mowlanas are now mawlanas, at least in writing (Musa 1995:93). Most Arabic loanwords are nouns, typically appearing in otherwise purely Bengali contexts and receiving Bengali affixation (masjid-e ‘in the mosque’) rather than Arabic morphology such as the definite article. Phrases like bissɔ-ijtemāʿ ‘world gathering’ or ṣiyām-sadhɔna ‘fasting-asceticism’ that join Arabic loanwords with Sanskrit derivatives are common. The 17th-century rise in non-nominal Arabic elements borrowed into Bengali was reversed in the 18th century – probably reflecting the declining fortunes of Persian under British hegemony (Mannan 1966:73). Among the non-nominal borrowings is the Arabic ẓāhir, used by the early 18th-century poet Vidyapati (Mannan 1966:67) in a verb phrase karilo ẓāhir ‘make manifest’. This illustrates the way Arabic loanwords can appear in Bengali verb phrases by virtue of the latter's capacity to form compound verbs using nouns or adjectives and the Bengali pro-verb kar ‘do.’

3. Counts and frequency of Arabic and Islamicate elements in Bengali
There are no large corpus-based linguistic studies of Bengali, let alone of the frequency of Perso-Arabic terms in actual instances of contemporary Bengali discourse. Writing in pre-Partition Calcutta, S.K. Chatterji counted 2,500 Perso-Arabic terms in Bengali (Chatterji 1934:210; Ahmed 1981:121). Writing 30 years later in Islamic East Pakistan, Hilali (1967) listed 9,000 such loanwords. But the relation of such ‘counts’ to actual usage is unknown.

We find a range of loanword frequencies in a small corpus of carefully transcribed, naturally occurring Bengali speech of various registers. In ‘Latifa's’ 1992 lament (Wilce 1998) only 6 percent of total word tokens were Perso-Arabic loans. By contrast, in the Bengali ‘translation’ of an Arabic prayer offered at a 1991 wedding (Wilce 2002), about 33 percent of the total words are Arabic loans.

Arabic-laden prayers and other speech registers – and metadiscourses on the frequency of loanwords – reflect linguistic ideologies inseparable from postcoloniality and competing nationalisms (Irvine and Gal 2000). Such ideologies played a clear role in the history of Bengali.

4. History and historiography
Apparently, it was the Hindu poet Bharat Chandra in his poem Mansingha Kāvya (1752) who coined the term dobhaṣi Bangla ‘dual language’ (Haq 1957:174) for a register using many Perso-Arabic loanwords. Some dobhaṣi literature was written in the → nastaʿliq script, or in Bengali written from right to left.

Haq argues that dobhaṣi reflects the 19th-century Wahhabi movement in southern Bengal. Abdul Mannan, who wrote the definitive treatment of dobhaṣi literature in 1966, sees its origins in earlier Mughal patronage of Bengali. The first work on record “which has preserved evidence of the influence of the language of Muslim rulers [on Bengali] is the Mɔnɔsavijɔyɔ of Bipradās Piplāi”, a Brahmin (ca. 1495 C.E., Mannan 1966:59).

Bharat Chandra wrote the following (from Onnɔdamɔngɔl):

na rɔbe prɔsad guṇ

[Persian, Arabic, Hindustani]

na hɔbe rɔsal

lack grace and poetic quality.

ɔtɔeb o kohi bhaṣa

I have chosen, therefore, the

yaboni misal

the mixed language of the Muslims.

ye hok se hok bhaṣa kavyo rɔs lɔye

The ancient sages have declared: “Any language may be used. The important thing is poetic quality” (Mannan 1966: 69–70; emphasis added)

This precolonial aesthetic of mixture gave way to a drive for purification.

In the 19th century, dobhaṣi Bengali borrowed even more Perso-Arabic lexemes, perhaps (ironically) reflecting forces unleashed by Halhed's (1969/1778) Grammar of the Bengal Language. Halhed considered foreign elements pollutants in the “pure Bengalese”. He acknowledged “the modern [mixed] jargon of the kingdom” but declared the loanwords unintelligible outside large cosmopolitan towns (1969:xiv). Following Halhed's lead, British Orientalists and Hindu pundits working in Calcutta (Ft. William College) produced a Sanskritized register successfully promulgated as ‘standard Bengali’. The intensification of Perso-Arabic borrowings in 19th-century dobhaṣi was thus a reaction to Orientalism and the Sanskritization of Bengali. As emerging Hindu and Muslim leaders competed for populist appeal, they declared the others' favored register (Sanskritized vs. dobhaṣi) “unintelligible to the masses”.

Some of Halhed's successors – e.g. William Carey – at least for a time rejected linguistic purism. “A multitude of words, originally Persian or Arabic, are constantly employed in common conversation, which perhaps ought to be considered as enriching rather than corrupting the language” (Carey 1801:iii; emphasis in original). But Qayyum (1981) notes that later editions of Carey's Grammar omitted these words. Around 1850, British missionary James Long dubbed the Islamized form of Bengali “Musalman Bengali” (later called Musalmani Bangla – a form relevant to producing targeted translations of the Bible).

Around 1900, members of the Hindu Bengali intelligentsia, such as Dinesh Chandra Sen and Rabindranath Tagore, made “Bengali literature” central to their “romantic nationalism” (Chakrabarty 2004). They believed that “the national [Bengali] literature” could engender a mystical union of the divergent groups of Bengali speakers, transcending the Hindu-Muslim divide. While they somewhat naively advocated this vision, Muslims in the united British Indian state of Bengal formed a Muslim Literary Association (1911), sensing that the Bengal Literary Academy (formed in 1893) was in some subtle way simply a “Hindu Bengali Literature Society”. But it was subtle. Hindu romantic nationalists did not advocate anything like the expurgation of Perso-Arabic words from Bengali. That was not what alienated Muslim literary figures. What the Hindu romanticists did so successfully was to promulgate a lexically Sanskritized Bengali that somehow appeared to be both the unmarked form of the language and the prestige variety.

5. Muslim attitudes to official support of Bengali
Colonial control required understanding and ranking various forms of Bengali. Two visions competed, ascribing to Bengali an enduring Hindu ‘essence’ or a growing Islamic influence. The first branded Musalmani ‘unintelligible’. The second prompted colonial officers and some Muslim leaders to propose a ‘separate language’ for Bengali Muslims (Ahmed 1981:122). But colonial intelligentsia made Sanskritized Bengali represent not only a primordial essence but a prestige standard. Muslim opposition even to a Musalmani variety was a reaction to the putative Hindu essence of Bengali and to Musalmani's reputation as an “unsophisticatedpatois” (Ahmed 1981:126; cf. Qayyum 1981).

That some (not all, Anisuzzaman 1996) Muslims of the mid-20th century rejected Bengali language education indicates Bengali had become a bone of contention. Today, Bengali historians debate whether Partition was the fruit of the Raj's divide and conquer policy or the resolution of ‘essential’ differences. Metadiscourses about Bengali are part of that tortured history.

6. The status of Bengali in the East Pakistan and → Bangladesh eras
After Partition, the provincial East Pakistan government appointed an East Bengal Language Committee whose policy goals, summarized under the banner sɔhɔj bangla ‘Simple Bengali’, were: “i) that… Sanskritization… be avoided as far as possible by the use of simple phraseology…; ii) that… expressions and sentiments of Muslim writers should strictly conform to… Islamic ideology; and iii) that the words, idioms and phrases in common use in East Bengal, especially those in the Puthi… literatures be introduced in the language more freely” (Chowdhury 1960, as translated by Dil 1986:454).

The reference to the dobhaṣi Puthi literature makes clear that the “idioms… in common use” were Perso-Arabic. Pakistan had strong motivations for replacing Sanskritic with Islamicate derivatives. Appeals to linguistic ‘simplicity’ may sound democratic but, in Pakistan and elsewhere, often serve other agendas (Bauman and Briggs 2003).

In the late 1980s, Arabic expressions began displacing Persian ones among Muslim Bangladeshis; Muslims began using Allāh ḥāfiẓ rather than the Persian Xoda ḥāfiẓ‘go[o]db[ewith]ye’. In 1995, Bangla Academy Director Monsur Musa wrote: “Nowadays, in certain Bengali newspapers, an eagerness to substitute Arabic words for prevailing Persian terms can be seen. These newspapers use ṣalāt instead of namaz, ṣiyām instead of roja – and Allāh is considered better than Xoda” (1995:92; translation mine). Musa noted that the Arabic words in announcements of religious events made them quite hard for the average Bengali to understand – an echo of older claims?

7. Conclusion
While for some, proliferating loanwords represent an impure accretion on the language of the land of Bengal, for others they can signal the true identity of the Bangladeshi nation-state – an Islamic identity (Farukkhi 1990). And there are many positions in between, for example those who celebrate Bengali authors' playful use of Perso-Arabic loanwords (Anisuzzaman 1996). The contemporary Bengali scene is a broad span over rapidly moving pani.

Bibliography
Ahmed, Rafiuddin. 1981. The Bengal Muslims, 1871–1906: A quest for identity. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Anisuzzaman. 1996. “The Bengali language as a vehicle of creativity: After 1952”.Contemporary Bengali writing: Literature in Bangladesh, Bangladesh period, ed. K.S. Murshid, 243–250. Dhaka: University Press Limited.

Bauman, Richard and Charles Briggs. 2003. Voices of modernity: Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Carey, William. 1801. A grammar of the Bengalee language. Serampore: Mission Press.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2004. “Romantic archives: Literature and the politics of identity in Bengal”. Critical Inquiry 30:3.654–683.

Chatterji, Suniti Kumar. 1934. The origin and development of the Bengali language, I. London: Allen and Unwin.

Chowdhury, Munier. 1960. “The language problem in East Pakistan”. Linguistic diversity in South Asia: Studies in regional, social, and functional variation, ed. Charles A. Ferguson and John J. Gumperz, 64–80. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Dil, Afia. 1986. “Diglossia in Bangla: A study of shifts in the verbal repertoire of the educated classes in Dhaka, Bangladesh”. The Fergusonian impact. II.Sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, ed. Joshua Fishman, 451–465. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Farrukhi, Asif Aslam. 1990. “Images in a broken mirror: The Urdu scene in Bangladesh”.Annual of Urdu Studies 7.83–87.

Halhed, Nathaniel B. 1969. A grammar of the Bengal language, 1778. Menston, Yorkshire: Scolar Press.

Haq, Muhammad Enamul. 1957. Muslim Bengali literature. Karachi: Pakistan Publications.

Hilali, Shaikh Ghulam Maqsud and Muhammad Enamul Haq. 1967. Perso-Arabic elements in Bengali. Dhaka: Central Board for Development of Bengali.

Irvine, Judith and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language ideology and linguistic differentiation”. Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, ed. P. Kroskrity, 35–83. Santa Fe: School of American Research.

Mannan, Qazi Abdul. 1966. The emergence and development of Dobhāsī literature in Bengal (up to 1855 A.D.). Dacca: Department of Bengali and Sanskrit, University of Dacca.

Musa, Monsur. 1995. Bāṇlādešer rāstrabhaṣā [The state language of Bangladesh]. Dhaka: Bangla Academy.

Qayyum, Muhammad Abdul. 1982. A critical study of the early Bengali grammars: Halhed to Haughton. Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.

Stewart, Tony K. 2001. “In search of equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu encounter through translation theory” History of Religions 40:3.261–288.

Wilce, James M. 1998. Eloquence in trouble: The poetics and politics of complaint in rural Bangladesh. New York: Oxford University Press.

——. 2002. “Tunes rising from the soul and other narcissistic prayers: Contested realms in Bangladesh”. Everyday life in South Asia, ed. D. Mines and S. Lamb, 289–302. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Bengali

by Enamul Haq, Md.

(i) MuslimBengali Language.
Bengali belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It may have begun to evolve as a separate language with a distinct identity, out of Gauṛa Apabhramsa, about the 8th or 9th century A.D. The greater part of the vocabulary of Bengali was derived or borrowed from Sanskrit.

The Muslims conquered Bengal at the beginning on the 13th century, and ruled the country for nearly six hundred years. Under Muslim rule Persian was one of the languages of culture, provincial administration, and inter-state communication. Because of this, large numbers of Persian words and, through Persian, Arabic and Turkish words, became part of the Bengali language.

In 1836 English replaced Persian as the language of administration. From then onwards Persian no longer enjoyed the same status as before in the national life of Bengal and of northern India generally. Before the handing over of power in 1947, which resulted in the partition of Bengal, words of Perso-Arabic origin constituted nearly 8% of the total vocabulary of Bengali, and a little more than 15% of MuslimBengali vocabulary. Hindustani began to be spoken in Calcutta from the latter half of the 18th to the middle of the 19th century, and a number of Hindustani words were received into Bengali vocabulary. At the beginning of the 19th century, there was in written Bengali something of a conflict between Sanskritised Bengali, that is, Bengali in which Sanskrit words preponderated, and Persian Bengali; examples of this can be found in the works of Mrityunjay Bidyālankār and Rām Rām Basu. During this period innumerable Muslimpunthis, known as Musalmānī Bānglā, appeared. These were written in a mixture of Bangali, Hindustani and Awadhi.

Words of Persian, Turkish or Arabic origin which have become part of Bengali can be classified under seven broad heads, namely: (1) Administration and warfare, e.g., phouj(soldiers) < fawd̲j̲ , tak̲h̲t (throne) < tak̲h̲t, laṛāi (war) < larāʾī, shahid (martyr) < s̲h̲ahīd , d̲j̲akham(wound) < zak̲h̲m, etc.; (2) Revenue and law-courts, e.g., d̲j̲ami (land) < zamīn, khād̲j̲nā(revenue) < k̲h̲azāna, Āin (law) < āʾīn , hakim (judge) < ḥākim, kazi (judge) < ḳāḍī , phaisala(judgement) < fayṣala, etc.; (3) Religion and ritual, e.g., Āllah (God) < Allāh , khodā (God) <k̲h̲udā, nāmāz (prayer) < namāz , rod̲j̲ā (fasting) < rawḍa , had̲j̲ (pilgrimage) < ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ , korbāni(sacrifice) < ḳurbānī, etc.; (4) Education, e.g., doāt (inkpot) < dawāt, kalam (pen) < ḳalam , kāgad̲j̲ (paper) < kāg̲h̲ad̲h̲, tālbilim (student) < ṭālib-i ʿilm, etc.; (5) Races, religions, and professions, e.g., Ihudi (Jew) < Yahūdī, Hidnu (Hindu race) < Hindū , Muslim (Muslim), Phiringi(English) < Farangī, dard̲j̲i (tailor) < darzī, etc.; (6) Culture and civilisation, e.g., rumāl(handkerchief) < rūmāl, golāb (rose) < gulāb, āṭar (perfume) < ʿiṭr , āynā (mirror) < āʾina, korma (preserved meat) < ḳurma, koftā (meat ball) < kūfta, hālwā (a type of sweetmeat) <ḥalwā, etc.; (7) Common things and notions in life, e.g., naram (soft) < narm, bāhbā (Well done!) < bah bah, shābāsh (Bravo!) < s̲h̲ād bās̲h̲, khabar (news) < k̲h̲abar, etc.

Persian contributed as many as 2,500 words to Bengali vocabulary in general, and nearly another 2,000 words to the vocabulary of the Muslims inhabiting the south-eastern part of East Pakistan in particular. In addition, Persian suffixes like ī, dān, dānī, dār , k̲h̲wur, bād̲j̲ , gīrī, are used to form Bengali adjectives, abstract nouns etc., e.g., desh + ī = deshi (country-made), phul+ dānī = phuldānī (flowervase), dokān + dār = dokāndār (shopkeeper), guli + k̲h̲wur = gulikhor(drunkard) mamlā + bād̲j̲ = mamlābād̲j̲ (litigant), bābu + gīrī = bābugīri (interested in fashion), etc. Persian words like nar and māda denote gender in Bengali, e.g., pāirā (pigeon), narpāirā(male pigeon), mādi pāirā (female pigeon). Similarly mardā and mādi before a Bengali word of common gender denote the male and the female of the species respectively, e.g., mardā kukur (dog), mādi kukur (bitch).

Arab merchants developed commercial relations with the people of the south-eastern coastal regions of Bengal long before the political conquest of the country by the Muslims. The Muslim conquest in later times strengthened the religious and cultural ties of the people of this area with the Islamic way of life, and resulted in an increase in the numbers of the Muslim population. It left its mark on the pronunciation of words in this part of Bengal; for example, in the districts of Noakhali, Čittagong and Sylhet the use of the Arabic voiceless velar fricativek̲h̲ in place of the Bengali plosive k and k̲h̲ of the same category, e.g., k̲h̲apoṛ < kāpoṛ (cloth),k̲h̲āi < khāi (I eat), etc., and the Arabic voiced alveolar fricative z in place of the Bengali voiced plosive-like affricate d̲j̲ of the standard Bengali dialect, e.g., zāi < d̲j̲āi (I go), zānā < d̲j̲ānā (to know) etc.

Since the handing over of power in 1947 there has been in East Pakistan a growing tendency to absorb words of Perso-Arabic origin in large numbers through Urdu, as a result of cultural and political contact with West Pakistan.

(M. Abdul Hai)

(ii) Muslim Bengali Literature

Formative Period (900-1200 A.D.).
Bengali sprang up as a distinct branch of the Indo-Aryan language about three hundred years before Muslim rule in Bengal and flourished as a regional literature a century and a half after the Muslim conquest. But it did not exist either as a language or as a literature before Bengal came in contact with Islām and the Muslims. Archaeological excavations at Pāhārpur (Rājs̲h̲āhī) and at Maināmatī (Tripurā), which led to the discovery of a few ʿAbbāsid coins of the period from the 8th to the 13th centuries, and the history of Muslim saints like Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī (d. 874) at Nāṣirābād, Čittagong, SulṭānMaḥmūd Māhīsawār (1047) at Mahāst̲h̲ān, Bogra,MuḥammadSulṭānRūmī (1053) at Madanpur Mymensingh, Bābā Ādam (1119) at Vikrampur, Dacca, prove that there was constant maritime and missionary communication between the Muslim world and Bengal while the Bengali language was being formed.

Turki Period (1201-1350 A.D.).
The Turks conquered Bengal in 1202 and took 150 years to establish their administration all over the country. This was the period of creation of an Islāmic atmosphere through administrative, religious and social machinery. Sanskrit, the fountainhead of Hindu culture, fell into desuetude; Persian, the official and cultural language of the Muslims, came into prominence; and Bengali, the language of the masses, developed rapidly. S̲h̲ek Sub̲h̲odayā, a Sanskrit hagiology on S̲h̲ayk̲h̲Ḏj̲alāl al-Dīn Tabrīzī (d. 1225), and Niranjaner Rus̲h̲mā, a Bengali ballad by Rāmāi Pandit, contain sufficient materials indicative of the growing Islāmic atmosphere in Bengal.

Period of Independence (1351-1575 A.D.).
Bengal became independent under Sulṭān Iliyās S̲h̲āh (1342-1357) and preserved her independence for 225 years. The Sultans of Pandua and Gauḍ identified themselves with the people and extended their patronage liberally to Bengaliliterature irrespective of caste and creed. The Ḇh̲āgavata, Rāmāyaṇa and Mahāb̲h̲ārata were translated into Bengali under their direct patronage; the great poets Vidyāpati and Čandīdās flourished; and Muslims, participating with their Hindu neighbours, opened up new avenues of literary themes primarily derived from Perso-Arabic culture.

The first attempt at popularising Bengali among Muslim scholars was perhaps made by the saint-poet Nūr Ḳuṭb-i ʿĀlam (d. 1416) of Pandua, who introduced the 'Rīk̲h̲ta Style' in Bengali, in which half the hemistich was composed in pure Persian and the other half in unmixed Bengali. The saint was a classmate of G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dīn Aʿẓam S̲h̲āh (1398-1410) and a life-long friend of the Sultan, under whose patronage Vidyāpati of Mit̲h̲ilā and MuḥammadṢag̲h̲īr of Bengal, the author of the first Bengali romance Yūsuf-Zulayk̲h̲ā, flourished. Other writers of romances, like BahrāmḴh̲ān with his Laylā-Mad̲j̲nūn, Sābirid Ḵh̲ān with his Hānifā-Kayrāparī, Donāg̲h̲āzī with his Sayf al-Mulk and MuḥammadKabīr with his Mad̲h̲umālatī (1583-1588), followed Ṣag̲h̲īr in quick succession.

Muslim historical tales too were introduced in Bengali by a few poets. Zayn al-Dīn wrote RasūlVijay on the exploits of the Prophet, under the patronage of Yūsuf S̲h̲āh (1478-1481), who also helped Mālād̲h̲ar Basu to compose S̲h̲rīkris̲h̲ṇa Vijay. Sābirid Ḵh̲ān also wrote a Rasūl Vijay, while S̲h̲ayk̲h̲FayḍAllāh (1545-1575) composed G̲h̲āzī Vijay and Goraks̲h̲a Vijay.

The earliest Muslim poet introducing Islāmic precepts in Bengaliliterature, was Afḍal ʿAlī. His book of admonition, Naṣīḥat-nāma, was written on the tenets of Islām. He was also a composer of songs, in one of which he mentions the name of Fīrūz S̲h̲āh (1532-1533).

Positive literary evidence on the fusion of Hindu and Muslim culture is found in S̲h̲ayk̲h̲FayḍAllāh's Satyapīr (1575). He described in it the beliefs and practices of a new cult aiming at a common platform of worship for Hindus and Muslims alike. Čānd Ḳāḍī and S̲h̲ayk̲h̲Kabīr, two composers of songs on the common ideals of Ṣufīs and Vais̲h̲ṇabs, flourished during the time of Ḥusayn S̲h̲āh (1493-1519) and his son Nuṣrat S̲h̲āh (1519-1531).

Mughal Period (1576-1757 A.D.).
Bengal came under the Mug̲h̲als in 1576, to whom the country was a 'hell full of the bounties of heaven'. They introduced their own culture with more stress on Persian and neglected the provincial literature. Notwithstanding this, Hindu literature developed on the themes of Čandī, Manasā, Ḏh̲arma, Annadā and Gangā; Vais̲h̲ṇab literature reached its climax and MuslimBengaliliterature, deeply influenced by Indo-Persian literature, flourished as never before.

Among Muslim literary figures, two major poets deserve special mention, namely, SayyidSulṭān (1550-1648) and Ālāwal (1607-1680). The former was the saint-poet of Čittagong; Nabī Vaṃs̲h̲a, his magnum opus, rivalled the BengaliRāmāyaṇa and Mahāb̲h̲ārata in all respects; the latter, who was a scholar poet of the Arakanese Court, adopted the theme of Padmāyatī(1651), from Hindī. Both of them exerted a wide and abiding influence on successive generations of poets, who not only improved upon the old themes, but also discovered new ones.

In the field of religion, the Naṣīḥat-nāma of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Parān (1550-1615) and Kifāyat al-Muṣallīnof Muṭṭalib (1575-1660) are outstanding. Naṣr AllāhḴh̲ān (1560-1625), a prolific writer on religious subjects, wrote the S̲h̲arīʿat-nāma, Mūsār Sawāl and Hidāyat al-Islām. The Bayānāt of Nawāzis̲h̲ Ḵh̲ān (1638), Hazār Masāʾil of ʿAbd Karīm (1698), Naṣīḥat-nāma and S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn-nāma of ʿAbdal-Ḥakīm (1620-1690), Sarsāler Nīti of Ḳamar ʿAlī (1676) also deserve notice.

In the realm of Muslim tales, the Nabī Vaṃs̲h̲a, Rasūl Vijay and S̲h̲ab-i Miʿrād̲j̲ of Sayyid Sulṭān; Ḏj̲ang-nāma of Naṣr AllāhḴh̲ān (1560-1625), Amīr Ḥamza (1684) of G̲h̲ulām Nabī andAnbiyāʾ Vāṇī (1758) of ḤayātMaḥmūd narrate many legends about the Prophet and his uncle Ḥamza. Sayyid Sulṭān's Iblīs-nāma, MuḥammadḴh̲ān's Ḳiyāmat-nāma, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Parān's Nūr-nāma and Muḥammad S̲h̲afīʿs Nūr Kandīl were built up with the Muslim concepts of Satan, Doomsday and Cosmogony respectively.

Romances introduced earlier were developed by ʿAbdal-Ḥakīm in his Yūsuf Zulayk̲h̲ā andLālmatī Sayf al-Mulk, Nawāzis̲h̲ Ḵh̲ān in his Gul-i Bakāwalī (1638), G̲h̲arībAllāh in his Yūsuf Zulayk̲h̲ā and Muḥammad Akbar in his Zeb al-Mulk (1673). When pure romances became monotonous, S̲h̲erbāz in his Fikr-nāma and S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Sāʿdī in his Gadā Mallikā (1712) introduced moral instruction in romances.

A good elegiac literature developed centring round the tragedy of Karbalā. MuḥammadḴh̲ān in his Maḳtūl Ḥusayn (1645), ʿAbdal-Ḥakīm in his Karbalā, ḤayātMaḥmūd in his Ḏj̲ang-nāma(1723), and MuḥammadYaʿḳūb in his Maḳtūl Ḥusayn (1694) contributed largely to the wide popularity of this theme.

British Period (1757-1947).
The Hindus took advantage of Western education at least half a century before the Muslims, and revolutionised Bengaliliterature by the introduction of a new prose and a new poetry embodying Western ideas, thoughts and forms. Iswar C̲h̲andra Vidyāsāgar (1820-1891), Bankim C̲h̲andra C̲h̲atterjī (1835-1894) and Mad̲h̲u-sūdan Datta (1824-1873) played a great rôle in this literary regeneration.

The Muslims entered the field half a century later. Mīr Mus̲h̲arraf Ḥusayn (1848-1931), Pandit Riyāḍal-Dīn Mas̲h̲hadī (1850-1919) S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ʿAbdal-Raḥīm (1859-1931), Kayḳobād (1858-1951), Muzzammil Ḥaḳḳ (1860-1933) and Dr. Abu 'l-Ḥusayn (1860-1916) took to this new Bengali to lay the foundation of modern MuslimBengaliliterature and a host of others came in their wake. Among them IsmāʿīlḤusaynS̲h̲īrāzī (1870-1931) was the most illustrious.

Meanwhile, Rabindranāth Tagore (1860-1941), the Nobel prize-winner, appeared on the literary scene of Bengal and raised her literature to a world stature.

Nad̲h̲r al-Islām (b. 1899), the Rebel Poet of MuslimBengal, ushered in a new school of realistic poetry full of life, light and vigour. He shared the sorrows and sufferings of his countrymen in particular and of oppressed humanity in general. He was the only singing bard to herald a new era of common men and awaken them to struggle for the independence of their motherland, a struggle which culminated later in the creation of Pākistān. In his wake, the poet Ḏj̲asīm al-Dīn (b. 1902) came forward to sing the songs of rural Bengal, particularly of its east portion, now known as East Pākistān.

(Md. Enamul Haq)

Bibliography
(i) MuslimBengali Language.
Halhed, BengaliGrammar 1783, intro.

(ii) MuslimBengaliliterature.
Md. Enamul Haq, MuslimBengaliLiterature, Karachi 1958

idem, Muslim Bānglā Sāhitya, Dacca 1958

Abdul Karim, Put̲h̲i Parichiti, Dacca 1958

Sukumar Sen, Islāmī Bānglā Sāhitya, Burdwan 1358 B.S.

idem, Bānglā Sāhityer Itihās, vols. i-iii (2nd ed.), Calcutta

Md. Abdul Hai and Sayyid ʿAlī Aḥsan, Bānglā Sāhityer Itivritta, Dacca 1956

Dinesh Chandra Sen, Vanga Bhās̲h̲ā-o-Sāhitya, 8th ed., Calcutta 1356 B.S.

Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, Calcutta 1926

Md. Shahidullah, Bānglā Sāhityer Kat̲h̲ā, Dacca 1953.
 
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Alaol's poetry as a source for Arakanese history - Kaladan Press Network

Alaol's poetry as a source for Arakanese history
Category: Arakan Historical Seminar

Written By Kaladan News
Published: 15 July 2007

Thibaut d'Hubert
Abstract


During the XVIIth century, a Bengali poetical tradition emerged in the kingdom of Arakan. The main figure of this tradition is the court poet Ãlãol(?1607-1680) who composed adaptations into Bengali of texts originally written in medieval Hindi (Avadhi) or Persian. As far as now, six poems are known to be his compositions.

One of Ãlãol's interesting features is the presence of long prologs to his poems where he talks about his life, his patrons and the context of composition of the texts. The historians of bengah literature have been very interested in the historical datas found in the prologs to his poems, and, based on this material, many attempts have been done to draw the outlines of Ãlãol's biography and the chronology of his texts.
But the picture Ãlãol gives of his cultural milieu and the references he makes to some political events that he witnessed, and which would have more or less direct consecluences on his own life, and the mentions of characters related to the political and religious life of his time, can be very valuable to the study of XVIIth c. Arakanese social and political history.

Nevertheless, Ãlãol's texts don't claim to be historical chronicles, and in order to be able to apprehend properly the meaning and the historical validity of the datas present in his poems, it is absoluteiy necessary to understand these as expressed according to Ãlãol's poetical idiom and as assuming a specific function in the court poet's rhetoric, who is, on one hand, bound to the order of his current patron, and, on the other hand, always in search of a possible patron.

My point will be to define the nature of the datas concerning Arakan social and political history one can collect fiom Ãlãol's poems, and to raise few questions regarding fhe interpretation of those passages which constitute the emergence of the production context into the poetical text.

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Introduction

During the 17th century in Mrauk U, the capital of the Arakanese kingdom, two poets testify the emergence of a literature using Bengali language as a means of expression. These two poets are Daulat Kãjî who lived under the reign of Sirisudhammaraja(1622-1638), and Ãlãol whose literary activity extended from the reign of Satui:dhammaraja(1645-1652) to 1670-1671. Both Ãlãol and Daulat Kãjî , worked for individuals beionging to the Muslim nobility at the Arakanese royal court. In this paper I will focus on Ãlãol's works in the perspective of the use of the historical data collectable from the prologues to his poems.

Recent studies have shown how cosmopolitan was the kingdom of Arakan which was a very important place inside the Bay of Bengal commercial network, especially during the 16th and 17th centuries1. Available sources for the study of Arakanese history reflect the variety of the cultures encountered in this area, and historians have to deal with the multiple languages and literary genres to be able to cross-check the data they provide. Until now, most of the texts used by historians such as Persian, Tripuri and Arakanese chronicles or reports written by Dutch or Portuguese merchants were informative by nature; when using the term "informative" I mean that the main purpose of those texts was to convey a knowledge regarding the economical or political life in the area at this time. Alaol's works are poetical by nature, nevertheless few historical elements can be found in the sections revealing the context of production. The question regarding those data is: did the poet relate those events in order to provide the readers a knowledge regarding his contemporary life or do they play a part directly linked to his actual status as a court poet? This question is of vital importance if one attempts to use Ãlãol's poetry as a source for Arakanese history.

Historical data found in Ãlãol's texts can be divided into four categories: the poet's own life, his patrons, the king and the royal family and references to political events. As I am not a specialist of Arakanese history, I won't treat any subject directly dealing with political history and I will confine myself to questions regarding Ãlãol's biography. However, my approach will be as methodological as possible and the issues concerning the interpretation of the data of the poet's life are parallel to questions about the reading of other factual elements furnished by his texts.

First of all, I will present the life of Ãlãol according to what one can gather from the prologues to his poems. Then, I will raise a few questions regarding the studies carried out by historians of Bengali literature inspired by those prologues. Later I will talk about the structure of these passages and the rhetoric that shows through such an analysis. Finally I will give one example of how the understanding of the author's rhetoric can help a better understanding of the meaning of what seems to be factual data.

Life and Work of Ãlãol: Ãlãol's biography according to the data available in the prologues to his poems

Compared to the rest of medieval Bengati literature, one of Ãlãol's distinctive features is the rather detailed accounts of his life found in the prologues of his texts. Starting from the elements contained in those passages, many scholars attempted to sketch out his biography. Such depictions of the poet's own life, thoogh usually poor in content, are not so rare in medieval Bengali literature. It is traditionally placed after the vandana or hamd - or invocations to the gods in Hindu texts, or to Allah for Muslim authors -, just before the narration begins. The autobiographical part of the poems is called ãtmav 0 ttãnta (lit."own story") or kavira ãtmakathã (''poet's own story"), and because it ends with an introduction to the circumstances of the composition of the text, contemporary editors sometimes name this section pustaka utpatira kathã ("story of the creation of the book"). Inspired by the prologues of Persian mathnavis, Ãlãol developed this already traditional account in Bengali literature. In the Padmavati and the Sikiandarnama he followed faithfully the structure of the originals and substituted the eulogies of the poets' patrons, gurus or pirs, or current sovereign, with those of his time and place, and the poets' lives with his life.

The first sections of the autobiographical part of the prologues where he mentions the place he came from, are always very similar. He sometimes uses almost the same verses in several poems2. After that, usually comes the section dealing with his arrival in Mrauk U (ben. Rosa0ga) and the salutary meeting with his patron - as we will see later, this is a very meaningful section regarding the rhetoric of his prologues. This also includes the description of the events which took place in Arakan in which he was involved. The last section describes the circumstances of the commissioning of the poem by the patron.

Before discussing the approaches of previous scholars while reconstructing the puzzle of Ãlãol's quite tumultuous life, I would like to add my own version of his biography.

At this stage of the analysis, my method to piece together his biography is the simplest: I render what he says, whithout trying to interpret or clarify the poet's own statements; in other terms, I will take the adage of medieval South-Asian copyists: yatha d000a0 tatha likhitam (lit."Written as seen").

Ãlãol's father was the "minister" (ben. amatya, patra) of the sovereign of the Fatihabad "'kingdom" (muluk), namely Majlis Kutub (Majlis Qutb). He used to stay in the city of Jalalpura situated in the country of Gau0a. One day, he was traveling by boat for business with his father, when Portuguese pirates (hãrmãd) attacked them. Ãlãol's father "became a martyr" after he died in the battle, while the poet survived. Wounded in the fight, he reached Mrauk U (Rosã0ga), where he was incorporated in the army as a "royal horseman" (rãjãsoyãra). These events are related in all his poems except Tohpha.

After a while, he met a member of the royal court called Magana who became his friend and protector. This very person ordered a translation into Bengali of the Avadhi poem of Muhammad Jayasi (frst half of the 16'h c.) called Padmavat. The poem Padmavati was composed during the reign of Satui:dharnmaraja (ben. Sadauma0dara, Pad. 113a) who ruled between 1645 and 1652. The poem contains a long eulogy of this king and his kingdom in fifty-two tristics. Ãlãol also stresses the bonds between Magana and the royal family.

Magana also asked Ãlãol to compose a poem on the theme of the love story between Sayf-ul-mulk and a fairy called Badi-uj-jamal, a tale from theThousand and one nlghts3. He tells us that a pir called Mahachum Saha (Sayph. 49a.4) once told the story during a gathering at Magana's place and, his protector, delighted by the story, wished this Persian love tale to be the subject of a poem composed in payara meter 5 in order to make it understandable to those who did not know Persian language. Magana passed away before Ãlãol could finish the poem which remained uncompleted for years. In the prologue to the poem, the author mentions extensively a period of regency after the death of Satui:dhammaraja but he does not make any allusion to the coronation of Candasudhamma.

In 1659, under Candasudhamma's reign (1652-1684), Ãlãol completed the poem Sati-Mayna o Lora Candra0i, the first part of which was composed by Daulat Kaji, another Bengali court poet of Arakan. This is the first poem that contains a colophon with a date given in the Hegira (1070) and Arakanese (1020) eras 6. This poem is an adaptation of a popular tale in the entire Gangetic valley. It tells the story of a queen, Mayna, who endures many austerities during the absence of the king, Lora, who went away to kidnap a beautiful princess whose husband, the king Vaimana, is unable to fulfill her desires. In the prologue to this text, Ãlãol only refers to the events preceding his arrival in Arakan without furnishing any new elements regarding his life since then – not with standing the commissioning of the poem itself by Choleman whom Ãlãol qualifies by the term mahapatra( Sat. 1.47a) or "prime minister".

Hapta paykar (or Sapta paykar), another translation from the Persian, but this time from a well known poem included in the Khamsa of Ni0ami Ganjavi (Caucasus,12th), was written by Ãlãol under the patronage of Sayid Mu0ammad Khan, a member of the king' s entourage 7. In the eulogy of Candasudhammaraja, the poet mentions the arrival of the mughal prince Shah Shuja' in Arakan (in 1660) 8, but he does not relate any incident connected to this event.

Between 1662 and 1664 9, Ãlãol translated from the Persian a "treatise on practical moral" (ben. nitisastra) entitled Tohpha, originally composed in Delhi during the 14th century by Yusuf Gada a sufi who belonged to the Chishtiyya order. Ãlãol's protector was a man named 0ulayman (ben. Solayaman or Choleman) about whom he does not give any information regarding his functions at the royal court. No political events are related in this text.

Around 1670 10, probably the same 0ulayman commissioned the poet to finish Sayphulmuluk Badiujjamal, the poem started under the patronage of Magana. Here, Ãlãol says that 0ulayman was in charge of the "royal domain" (rajera vi0aya) and that he had under his orders thousands of men "bearers of firearms" (agni astra dhari)11. In this poem, he tells how he has been caught in the conflict between Shah Shuja' and Candasudhammaraja because a man called Mirza (ben. Mirja) accused him of a crime -though he does not indicate what was the fault he was said to have committed. He stayed fifty days in jail, lost his belongings but finally regained his freedom, but he and his family were penniless and "totally dependent on others' will” 12

The last poem13 to be known to us as one of Ãlãol's composition is another translation of Ni0ami's Khamsa: the Sikiindarnama or "Book of Alexander"14. His patron at that time was MajIis Nabaraja 15, who was a "mahamatya" (lit. "great minister"). In the prologue to this last poem, the mentions the conflict between Shuja' and Candasudhammaraja, adding further elements to his biography like his initiation to the Qadiriyya 0ariqa by the qa0i of Mrauk U (ben. rosa0gera kaji), Sayid Mas'ud Shah (ben. Saiyad Masaud Saha), or his teaching activity of literature (lit. "reading", pa0ha), singing and music (gita-sa0gita) to "the sons of very important people"16

Issues regarding some aspects of Ãlãol’s biography as depicted by previous scholars

The brief and somehow "telegraphic" biography of Ãlãol I have presented here according to the elements found in the protogues to his poems is an attempt to redefine the bases of the reconstruction of his life. My point now will be to discuss the way previous scholars worked to shed some light on the unclear passages of his biography, and on the missing elements then considered of crucial importance, like his birth and death places.

Ãlãol appeared in the scholarly field with the work of Abdul Karim (1871-19530 17 who collected and catalogoed hundreds of manuscripts, mainly of poems composed by Muslitn authors. His leitmotiv was the preservation of the literary heritage of Bengali Muslims by publishing papersl8 and editing texts of Muslim poets of the medieval period. He devoted many essays to Ãlãol, who according to him was one of the greatest Bengali poets of the medieval period. He and his disciple Enamul Haq, wrote the first, and so far, the only monograph giving a general overview of Bengali literary production in Arakan 19. Based on the study of the manuscripts collected by Abdul Karim in his native region - the area of Chittagon - they introduced the authors chronologically, from Daulat Kaji(under the reign Sirisudharmnaraja1622-1638) and Ãlãol , who are the only poets who composed in Mrauk U, to more or less datable poets who lived in the Chittagong area during the 17th c.

In the book, the authors claim that Ãlãol was born in Jobra, a village in the Chittagong area, where two places would be connected to his name: "Alaolera dighi"( Ãlãol's pond) and "Alaolrea masjid” (Ãlãol's mosque). This village is never mentioned in the texts and S. Mukhopadhyay suspects the authors of an overwhelming attachment to their native region 20. S. k Ahsan also demonstrated the erroneous nature of this statement 21.

Our point here is not to discuss the location of Ãlãol's birth place, but to question the actual need for contemporary scholars to speculate on these subjects for the investigation of which we do not have any reliable sources to work with. The only thing we know about Ãlãol's life prior to his arrival in Mrauk U is that he stayed in the western part of Bengal and that his father worked for Majlis Qutb, who probably was the bhuyan (landlord) whom Mirza Nathan mentions in the Baharistan-i-gha’ibii 22.

Another question is his dates of birth and death. As nothing can be firmly established from his texts, and as no exterior source gives us any clue regarding this question, the speculations of Enamul Ha resulting in the very precise dates 1607-1680 are very hypothetical. The only thing ascertainable is that he wrote the first poem known to us (Padmavati) under the reign of Satui: dhammaraja (1645-1652) and the last ones (Sayphul muluk andSikandarnama) around 1670/1671. We should then confine ourselves to saying that he belongs to the bulk of the seventeenth century and that we are aware of a period of literary activity extending to twenty-five years, between 1645 and 1671.

The speculations around his biography seem to have been motivated mainly by two things: the need for Eastern Bengah intellectuals and scholars to stress the importance of Muslim authors of this region in the history of Bengali literature, and the enthusiasm caused by the autobiographical parts of Ãlãol's poems, data regarding the life of medieval poets being extremely rare.

Abdul Karim was an autodidact, and his point of view on this literature is very valuable for he witnessed the end of its popular use 23. Nevertheless, his approach was that of a scholar and he was deeply conscious of and worried about the harm caused to the texts by the popular editions published in Calcutta and Dacca 24. He often calls these editors "businessmen" (vyavasadar) and "people free from knowledge and wit" (vidya-buddhi-sunya loka). His scientific approach to medieval literature was partly in reaction to this commercial attitude of Muslim publishers from Calcutta and Dacca.

Most of Abdul Karim's essays on medieval Bengali literature start with a complaint regarding the neglect of scholars and more generally of the Bengali cultural elite for the texts composed by Muslim authors during the medieval period. Indeed, Harprasada Shastri (1853-1931), Dinesh Chandra Sen (1866-1939) and Nagendranath Vasu (1866-1938), who were the pioneers in the field of study and edition of medieval Bengali manuscripts, were all Hindus. Abdul Karim considered unfair the responsibility and the means given by the British to Hindu scholars to work on Sanskrit and Bengali Hindu texts and saw the dissolution of Muslim Bengali literature partly as a result of this phenomenon. The competition and the need to rehabilitate "Muslim literature" is omnipresent in his texts 25. This Hindu / Muslim dichotomy goes with another dichotomy West/Est Bengal: the Western part being the cradle of important Hindu movements such as Caitanism and the Eastern part, especially Chittagong, being the so called original center of Bengali Muslim culture 26.

In such a context, the location of the birth place of a poet as Ãlãol who is considered as the main contributor to this "Bengali renaissance"27 was a crocial question. His disciple Enamul Haq, followed in the steps of his master, but the political context changed with the creation of East Pakistan in 1948 and with the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. The issue then was less the competition between Hindu and Muslitn literature, than the constitution ofa Bangladesh identity in a nation building context.

The focus was then on the role of Ãlãol's poetry in the history of Muslim Bengali culture and the context of Arakanese literary production was considered as secondary: the exil of Bengali poets was understood as a temporary situation due to the tumultuous political context of Bengal after the arriving of the Mughals. The literacy activity of Bengali poets in Arakan was also regarded as a chance for Arakanese people who were thougtlt to be "culturally backward" 28.


Recent works such as J. P. Leider's PHD thesis 29 make possible the settlement of Ãlãol's work in a clearer historical frame. Without neglecting the importance of Bengali literature in Ãlãol's poetry and the impact of his poems on later Bengali poets, by doing research on this literature, my attempt is to depart from nationalist approaches and to study Ãlãol's poetry, in its Arakanese context, with a reflection on the cultural incidences of such a literary production in a kingdom that politically and economically was reaching the climax of its activity.

I mentioned earlier the lack of critical analysis of Ãlãol's prologues and the enthusiasm caused by the autobiographical elements wich they contain. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss the data provided by these passages according to Ãlãol's rhetoric.

Rhetorical speech versus informative discourse: toward a comprehensive reading of Ãlãol's prologues

At first sight, what is striking about the prologues of Ãlãol's poems is, on the one hand the reflection led by the poet on his literary activity and more generally on poetics, and on other hand the depiction of the context of production of his poems. The questions I would like to raise now are: why did Ãlãol relate his autobiography in five of his six poems? and how much credit can be given to the depictions provided by Ãlãol, considering the poetical nature of his texts and the material dependence to his patrons suggesting the use of a specific rhetorical discourse? In order to answer these questions, after analyzing the structure of his prologues, I propose to give one example of the ambiguity concerning a well established part of his biography revealed by the study of his rhetoric.

As I have already mentioned, the prologues are always structured in the same way that is as following 30.

a) Eulogy of the king (or queen);

b) Eulogy of the patron (related to his function at the royal court);

c) Autobiographical part:

Section I:

1.Depiction of the place he came from (Fatihabad);

2.Attack of the Portuguese pirates, death of his father, arrival to Rosa0ga;

Section II:

1.Eulogy of the patron (as Ãlãol's protector);

2.Depiction of the patron's court and ordering of the poem;

Section III:

1.Comments on literary composition and poetics;

2.Concluding vers (es) of the prologue.

This is the basic structure of the prologues, but, regarding the content of section I, one can divide Ãlãol's poems in two groups. Pad, Sayph 1 and Sat. present strictly the same events, but Sayph. 2 omits the attack by the Portuguese and the arrival in Rosa0ga, which is understandable as these events have been narrated in the first prologue, and replace it with the arrival of Shuja' and the poet's confinement resulting in the loss of his belongings. In Sik the author mentions both of those events.

This pattern shows how calculated is the presentation of all the elements of his life, and the regularity of this passage is a sign of a well designed rhetorical speech. In the first two sections, Ãlãol gives the assurance of his respectable origins - he is the son of a "minister" and belongs to a milieu of "people keen on gatherings, refined in their speech and devotion" 31 - which is echoed in 2.2, where he describes briefly the atmosphere at his patron's court. Then, the adventurous episode of the Portuguese attack involving his father's death and his arrival in Mrauk U wounded and forsaken, amplifies the eulogy of his protector's generosity. This technique is used twice in the Sik where he ads his confinement and presents his protector as the one who saved him and his family from total impotence.

Section 3 that is sometimes (e.g. Sayph. 2) interlaced with 2.2, is made to show the skills of Ãlãol as a poet and how competent he is to fulfill the task he has been assigned 32.

Ãlãol's prologues are not purely informative, and the data contained in these passages are not to be read as a legacy for future generations regarding his contemporary life. They have a well defined aim directly linked to the poet's current preoccupations: enabling him to find his next patron in order to earn his livelihood. Chronicles and reports I mentioned in the introduction that I called "informative" also correspond to a specifc rhetoric and it is also necessary to take it in account, but the aim of such texts is usually ideological and the impact expected is on a wider timescale. Here, the author seems to use factual events in order to convince people facing him while reciting his poem, people liable to provide him with material needs. The immediate and non ideological character of his rhetoric in these passages makes it different from the one occuring in informative text.

Let's now see how the awareness of Ãlãol's rhetoric can redefine what we know about his biography. It is commonly accepted that the first protector of Ãlãol was Magana. In Pad he writes:

kahite aneka katha du0kha aipanara / rosa0ge asiya hailun raja- achoyara //

bahu musalmana saba rosa0ge baisanta / sadacari kulina pa00ita gu0avanta //

sabe k0pa karenta sambha0a bahutara / alima olama bali karenta adara //

mukhya pa0esvarira amatya mahajana / satyavadi jitendriya0hakura Magana //

bhagyodaya haila mora vidhi parasana /du0kha nasa hetu tana sa0geta milana //

aneka adara kari bahula sammana /satafa po0anta anna vastra dana //

madhura alape vasa haila mora mana / tana gu0a sutra haila grivate bandhana //

(Pad. 196-202)

"I feel much pain telling my story. Arrived in Rosa0ga, I became royal horseman.

Many Muslims live in Rosa0ga; they are honest in their conduct, noble [by birth], erudite and endowed with qualities.

Every one provides favors and converses much [with me]; learned men call [me] scholar and show affection.

The great man who is the first queen's minister is the lord Magana, an adept of truth and a defeater of his senses.

Touched by destiny, my good fortune rose, [and] for the sake of annihilation of grief [I was to] meet with him.

Showing much affection and respect [to me], he constantly took care of me with gifts of food and garments.

By his sweet speech my heart has been subdued, and the garland (lit.string) of his qualities has been tied to my neck."

In this extract, we get the impression that Magana is the first protector of Ãlãol who does not mention the existence of any other benefactor before him. Let's now compare these verses with a passage taken fiom the prologue of Sati Mayna o Lora Candra0i:

katheka apana du0kha kahimu prakasi / raja asoyara hainu rosa0gete asi //

srimanta choleman maha gu0avanta /prra desi gu0i paile adara po0anta //

maha hara0ita haila paiya ahmare / anna vastra dane nitya po0anta sadare //

(Sat. 8-10.)

"I openly told some griefs of mine. Arrived in Rosa0ga I became royal horseman.

The noble Choleman is a great [man adorned] with qualities; when he acquires a stranger endowed with qualities, he respectfully takes care of him.

He became most joyful when he obtained me; constantly he affectionately took care of me with gifts of food and garments."

Once more no transition is formulated to articulate his arrival in Rosa0ga and the meeting with the benefactor. This is related to the rhetoric mentioned above: the patron has to be introduced as the protector par excellence. Without the mention of the name of the current king, it would be impossible to define any chronological order between both of these texts. It is then inappropriate to claim that Magana was the first patron of Ãlãol, because no outside source can lead us to such a conclusion and, submitted to an analysis taking in account the general rhetoric of the poet, the text itself does not contain this statement.

Conclusion

As my previous analysis tends to demonstrate, autobiographical parts of Ãlãol's poems are organized according to a specific rhetoric that has to be aknowledged when we try to interpret the factual data used to build his speech. That's why I want to stress on the precautions that are to be taken when using a text which content is not informative in the field of historical investigations. With the issues I mentioned concerning Ãlãol's biography my attempt was to show how dependent on the current necessity of the court poet are what seem to be positive data found in the poems. The problematic is the same for data regarding his patrons, the royal family or any political event: in order to be scientifically valid they have first to be replaced in the poet's rhetorical flame and, when possible, cross-checked with other sources.

Until now, Ãlãol's literary production has often been anecdotically mentioned by historians as a proof of the Muslim presence at the Arakanese court during the 17th century. As we noticed in the introduction, different historical characters and events appear in the prologues to Ãlãol's texts, and the study of those elements would certainly help clarifying a few points of the Arakanese history during this period.

In my paper only factual data have been mentioned. Some of those data as the autobiographical elements or the names and functions of Ãlãol's patrons could not be cross-checked with any other source, but some others such as the arrival of Shuja' and the royal successions are found in different texts.

One can assume that a precise and methodical parallel study of the titles and functions of Ãlãol's patrons as he depicted them and of what is found in the Arakanese chronicles could enable us to have a better idea of the status of this Bengali speaking nobility of Mrauk U.

But Ãlãol's texts are above all a priceless source for the cultural history of the kingdom. The choice of the translations and the references to other texts made by the author inside the poems provide us with the actual availability of Persian, Sanskrit and Avadhi literature in 17th century's Mrauk U. The variety of Ãlãol's cultural references and his statement concerning his teaching activity also raise the question of the education of this nobility. All his works reveal a concern for educating his patrons and their court, as well as an attempt to forge an original, literary taste by choosing Persian themes and expressing them through a very Sanskritic poetical idiom in a Bengali metrical frame. Through his references to Sanskrit literature and poetics one can assume that he had been in contact with Brahmins and bouddhist scholars, which encourages further studies regarding Sanskrit scholarship in Mrauk U.

Many informations regarding the religious life can also be gathered from his poems. All the texts he translated circulated in Sufi milieus either as meditative material (e.g. Padmavati, Sati Mayna o Lora Candra0i) or as doctrinal hand book (Tohpha). Ãlãol himself was initiated to the Qadiriyya Sufi order.

The perspectives of studies are numerous and the material abundant, yet all his

poems have not been critically edited. By now, only Sikandarnama, Padmavati, Sati Mayna o Lora Candra0i andTohpha have been scientifically edited. Sayphulmuluk and Hapta paykar are still to be done. As far as I know, no English translation of his poems exists and very few papers dealing with Ãlãol are available in this language 33.


References

  1. See S. Subrahmanyam, "And a River Runs through it: The Mrauk U Kingdom and its Bay of Bengal Context", in J.Gommans and J.Leider ed.,The Maritime Frontier of Burma – Exploring Political Culture and Commercial Interaction in the IndianOcean World,1200-1800, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KITLV Press,Leiden, Amsterdam, 2002, pp. 107-126.
  2. For instance the following sentence which refers to the sovereign of his native region: majlis kutub tahate adhipati / ami hina dina tana patrera santati // (Pad. 193ab), majlis kutub tayhate adhipati / tahana amatyasuta mui hinamadi // ( Sat. 2.5ab) , rajyesvara majlis kutub mahasaya/ muni ksudra mati tana amatya tanaya // ( Sat. 13.5ab).The translation for these three verses would be : "Majlis Qutb is the sovereign [of this region, and] I, who am poor and mediocre (/ a fool, hinamati), am the son of his minister (patra or amatya).
  3. See Dena Gaji,Sayphul muluk Badiujjamal Ahmed Sharifed., Dhaka, 1975, pp. 1-13.
  4. For the prologue to Sayphul muluk Badiujjamal I used the extracts edited by A. Karim. See A..Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada, AbdulAhsan Chaudhuri ed., Dhaka, 1997, pp.250-262.
  5. The payara is the most popular meter in the north-eastern part of South-Asia. It is a syllabic meter of 14 feet, with a regubr caesura after the eighth foot. Most of the Bengali, as well as Assamese and Oriya medieval literature has been composed in payara.
  6. See S. Mukhopadhyaya, Puratanabangla sahityera tathya o kalakrama, Dhaka, 2000, p. 327 and Ãlãol, Sati-Mayna Lora Candrani, Mohammad Abdul Kaum ed., Dhaka, 1992, p. 127.
  7. A. Karim, and other scholars affer him, said he was a "general of the army" (ben.samara saciva), but in the manuscript I worked with at the Bangla Acaderay (Hapta paykar alokacitra 33) I didn't notice such a title. In the last line of the folio n˚ 11 and first line of the n˚12; one can read affer the eulogy of Candasudhammaraja: hena moha raj[e]svbara akhanda sampada / tana moha sanamati chaida mohammada // The word sanamati that qualifies Sayid Muhammad (Chaida Mohammada in the text) means "quiet minded", but a may be a corruption of sainyapati"general of the army". As I have not check more manuscripts of Hapta paykar yet, and in the absence of any critical edition of the poem, I am unable to come to more precise conclusions regarding the function of Mohammad Khan at the royal court.
  8. Ms., B.A. alokacitra n˚ 33 folio n˚ 11,1. 7-8.
  9. Two dates are avaibble in the colophon: 1073 Hegira (=1662 A.D.) and 1026 maghi(= 1664 A.D.). See Ãlãol, Tohpha, A.Sharif ed., Dhaka, 1975, introduction p. 8, for another reading of the chronogram resulting with the dates 1663/1664-1665, see S.Mukhopadhyaya, Puratana bangle sahityera tathya o kalakrama, Dhaka, 2000, p.328.
  10. The poet says that "nine years passed" since the incident with Shk Shuja' in 1661. See Sayph 20a.
  11. A. Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada racanavali, Abdul Ahan Chaudhuri ed., Dhaka, 1997,p.259.
  12. The informations about the time he spent in jail and his situation after his liberation are given in the Sikandarnama. See Ãlãol, Sikandarnama, A.shrif ed., Dhkha, 1977.p.28.
  13. In Sikandarnama, after the narration of his life, before he starts to introduce his patron, he says: "ten years passed in such a manner" (ehi mate dasa bachara gain gela / Sik. 13. 25a.). It is not very clear what is the starting point of these ten years, but one can assume that he refers to the time he spent in jail after the arrival of Shah Shuja' in 1661.
  14. The originai Persian poem is divided into two sections namely the"Sharaf nama” the narrative part dealing with the conquests of Alexander, and the "Iqbal nama” that is didactical and speculative in content. Ãlãol only translated the Sharaf nama.
  15. “Nabaraja” may be a title (< sk. navaraja) and its literal meaning would be "young king" or "prince".
  16. See Ãlãol, Sikandarnama, A.Sharif ed., Dhaka, 1977, pp. 27-28.
  17. Dinesh Chandra Sen in his History of Bengali Language and Literature, already mentioned Ãlãol and his poems, but didn't go further in the study of his works.
  18. See Intro A. Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada racanavali, Abdul Ahsan Chaudhuri ed., Dhaka, 1997 and his biography A. Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada jivana o karma, Dhaka,1994.
  19. Md. Enamul Haq and A. Karim, Arakan rajasabhaya bangle sahitya[1600-1700], Kolkata, 1st edition 1935, in Muhammad Enamul Hak racanavali, vol. 2, Dhaka, 1993.
  20. In their monograph on Bengali literature at the court of Arakan the two authors also claim that Daulat Kaji, who by the way does not give any infomration about his personal life, was a native of the Chittagong area too. And according to them his descendents remained in the village of Sultanpur, in the Hatajari sub-district E. Haq. Muhammed Enamul Hak racanavali, vol.2.pp.43-44.
  21. Ãlãol, Padmavadi,S. A. Ahsan ed, Dhaka, 2003, pp. 30-31.
  22. See S.Mukhopadhyaya, Puratana bangle sahityera tathya o kalakrama, Dhaka, 2000, p.334 and Ãlãol, Padmavati,S. A. Ahsan ed, Dhaka, 2003, pp. 30-31.
  23. A. Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada jivana o karma, Dhaka, 1994, p.119.
  24. See A. Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada racanavali, Abdul Ahsan Chaudhuri ed., Dhaka, 1997, pp. 422-426.
  25. This does not mean that he rejected Hindu ritruatwe. On the contrary, his interest for medieval literature was arisen after reading poems on the love of Radha and Krsua. He himself edited several Hindu texts and was well versed in Sanskrit language and literature. See the introduction of A. Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada racanavali, Abdul Ahsan Chaudhuri ed., Dhaka, 1997, and A. Karim, Abdul Karim sahityavisarada jivana o karma,Dhaka, 1994.
  26. E. Haql Muhammad Enamul Haq racanavali vol.2, pp. 33-34.
  27. See S. Bhattacharya, "Myth and History of Bengali Identity in Arakan”, in J. Gommans and J.Leider ed., The Maritime Frontier of Buma – Exploring Political, Cultural and Commercial Interaction in the Indian Ocean World, 1200-1800,Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KITLV Press, Leiden, Amsterdam, 2002, pp. 206-210.
  28. For instance see the first paragraph of A. M. Serajuddin, "Muslim inffuence in Arakan and the Muslim names of the Arakanese kings: a Reassessment”, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 31.1, Dhaka, 1986 and E. Haq,Muhammad Enamul Haq recanavali vol.1, p.357.
  29. J. P. Leider, Le royaume d’Arakan, Birmanie: son histoire politique entre le debut du Xve etla fin du XVIIe siecle, Paris, 2004.
  30. "This plan as been made according to the content of five prologues (Pad, Sayph, 1, Sati, Sayph.2 and Sik). Tohpha does not contain a. complete autobiographical part and Hapta paykar being not edited yet and having only one manuscript to our disposition we didnt dare take it into account.
  31. baise samajika loka ukti bhakti sista // Sat.2b
  32. Ãlãol often stresses the idea that poetry is a craft and requires specific skills obtainable by the study of treatises (ben.sastra). See Th. d'Hubert, La culture indo-persane la literature Bengali medievale: question autour de “I’art poetique” dans I’oeuvre d’ Ãlãol (? 1607-1680), EPHE, paris 2005, pp. 39-40.
  33. See for instance S. Sen, Histcvy of Bengali Literature, New Delhi, 1976; Gaeffke, Peter, "Alexander and the Bengali Sufis", in Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature, research paper, 1988-1991, presented at the Fifth Conference on'Devotional Literature in New Indo-

This paper was submitted at "Arakan History Conference", Bangkok 23.11 - 25.11.2005, organised by the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.
 
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Alaol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alaol-Ali Abbas Husaini[1] (Bengali: আলাওল; 1607-1680 CE) was a poet in Bengal during medieval age.[2] He is thought to be born around 1607 in Faridpur in the present-day Bangladesh. His most well known work is Padmavati, which depicts the story of Padmavati, the Sinhala princess and the queen of Chittor. He is considered to be one of the most prolific medieval Bengali poets.[2] Since most of his poems were combination of emotion with intellect, he is called thePandit Kavi or 'Wise Poet' of medieval Bengali literature.[2]

There is an important literary prize named after him in Bangladesh, the Alaol Puroshkar.

Early life
Alaol was born in Fatehabad, located currently in Faridpur of Bangladesh, to a minister in the court of Majlis Qutb, the ruler of Fatehabad.[3][4] Alaol was kidnapped by Portuguese pirates while travelling on boat with his father and subsequently was taken to Arakan.[3] Alaol worked as a bodyguard for a while, but slowly his reputation as a poet spread. His talent was first recognised by Solaiman, a minister of king Srichandra Sudharma (Sanda Thudhamma) of the Mrauk-U dynasty of Arakan.

Works
In 1659, he completed Sati Mayana o Lor-Chandrani, the first part of which was completed earlier by another Bengali court poet of Arakan, Daulat Qazi.[3] He translated Tohfa at the request of Srichandra Sudharma or Sanda Thudhamma. Later, prince Magan Thakur, the foster-son of the sister of king Srichandra Sudharma and co-regent and the prime minister of Arakan, secured him a place in the court of Arakan.

His major work, Padmavati, based on Malik Muhammad Jayasi's Padmavat was written under the patronage of Magan Thakur. He also began writing the Saifulmuluk Badiuzzamal, an adaptation of a Persian work of same name during this period. After the death of Magan Thakur, he received patronage from Saiyad Muhammad Musa, the army chief of king Shrichandra Sudharma. He translated the Haftapaykar from Persian as Saptapaykar in Bengali on his request. In the eulogy of Saptapaykar, Alaol mentioned the arrival Mughal prince Shah Shuja in Arakan.[3] In 1659, Shah Shuja took refuge in Arakan court. In 1660, after the killing of Shah Shuja, Alaol was also thrown out of the Arakan court because of his closeness with him. According to his autobiographical passages in 'Sikandernama', he was initially imprisoned. At this juncture, Sayed Masud Shah, a minister or Qazi of the Arakan king gave him shelter. Masud Shah also gave Alaol Khilafat under QadiriyyaTariqa. Alaol completed his Saifulmuluk Badiuzzamal on his request. He spent his last days in the court of Majlis Navaraj, another minister of Arakan, where he wrote his last work 'Sikandernama' (according to Ahmed Sharif) or Dara-Sekandar (according to Sukumar Sen), a translation of Eskander-nama by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi.[4]

His works, apart from Ragtalnama, are adaptations of works in other languages which include:
  • Padmavati
  • Satimayana-Lor-Chandrani (completion of Doulat Kazi's work)
  • Saifulmuluk Badiuzzamal
  • Sikandernama (1671-72)
  • Tohfa (1660)
  • Saptapaykar
  • Ragtalnama
His poems demonstrates his prolific Sufi idea based on mysticism and his own Sufi interpretations.[5]

Legacy
A principal mail student Dormitory of the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh has been named after him as Alaol Hall.[6]

References
  1. Jump up^ Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature: A-Devo - Google Books. Books.google.com.bd. Retrieved 2013-05-24.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c Wakil Ahmed. "Alaol in Banglapedia". Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.Retrieved: 2014-01-13
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Thibaut D' Hubert. "Alaol". Kaladan Press Network.Retrieved: 2014-01-13
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b Sen, Sukumar (1993). Islami Bangla Sahitya (in Bengali), Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, ISBN 81-7215-301-5, pp.34-6
  5. Jump up^ Abu Musa Arif Billah (July 2008). "20th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Manchester 2008". European Association of South Asian Studies.Retrieved: 2014-01-21
  6. Jump up^ "Official Website". University of Chittagong. Retrieved: 2014-01-21
External links
Alaol | BanglaPedia : National Pedia of Bangladesh
http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/ec...o16/panelpdfs/Fileuploadmax10Mb,134379,en.pdf
"13. Abu Musa Mohammad Arif Billah, SOAS, London
Syncretism, Mysticism and Artistry in Alaol’s and Jayasi’s Padmāvatī: a Comparative
Study

Alaol contributed a lot in the promotion of the late medieval Bengali literature. His narrative Sufi
romance Padmāvatī written in Bengali is, originally, a transformation of a Hindi poem of the same
title by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. As a Sufi, Jayasi embellishes his Padmāvatī by Persian Sufi
tradition, especially by Attar’s -TairMantiq u’t, the speech of birds. Alaol’s transfigures the
structure, symbolism, metaphor and exemplification of the poem immensely by his creative
imagination and by, to some extend, his own way of Sufi interpretations – well reflected in the
final part of his poem. He demonstrates his prolific Sufi idea, extending Jayasi’s fanā, i.e.
annihilation, to his baqā, i.e. subsistence, concept by illustrating an imaginary relationship
between the two child princesses of Ratan Sen and Sultan Alauddin of Delhi. This paper attempts
to draw the quality, significance, syncretism, and mysticism of Alaol’s Padmāvatī with necessary
citations and textual evaluation. "

Alaol's contemporary Shah Shuja:
Banglapedia
"Shah Shuja (1639-1660 AD) Mughal viceroy of subah Bangla, was the second son of Emperor shahjahan and Empress Mumtaj Mahal. Born on 23 June 1616,.......

Shah Shuja, a typical Mughal prince, was learned, cultured and polished. He patronised Persian poets and scholars who adorned his court. These people were mostly from Iran and belonged to the Shia sect. His important nobles were Shias, and even in the subordinate posts the Shias were predominant. His mother was a Shia lady, his two wives, married one after the other, were also Shia. There is a tradition prevalent at Dhaka that Shuja brought with him to Bengal three hundred Shias whom he got settled in different parts of the country. At Delhi, rumour spread that Shah Shuja had turned a Shia, and the supporters of his brother aurangzeb fanned the rumour. But the accusation was not true; like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he appreciated the cultured intellectual society of Persian scholars, sufis and administrators.

Shuja was a great builder; the earliest extant Mughal buildings at Dhaka date from his time. They are the bara katra, the idgha, the husaini dalan and the Churihatta mosque. The Bara Katra was built on the bank of the river Buriganga (Budiganga), a little to the south of Chaukbazar. A large building, a grand and imposing structure, it was originally built for the residence of the prince, but since the latter preferred to live at Rajmahal, the Bara Katra was given for the residence of travelling merchants, ie it was used as a katra or Sarai. The Idgah is a raised platform, enclosed on all sides, meant for congregational prayers on the two Id days. The Husaini Dalan, built by Sayyid Murad in 1642-43, was used for the congregation of the Shias and the Churihatta mosque was built in 1650.......

he decided to leave Bengal (and India) for good and take shelter in arakan. He left Tanda with his family and retinue in the afternoon of 6 April 1660 and reached Dhaka on 12 April. He left Dhaka on 6 May and boarded the Arakanese ships on 12 May at bhulua.

Shuja made contacts with Arakan before his departure from Bengal. His plan was to go to Makka and thence to Persia or Turkey. But as the sea was rough in May and the rainy season, he asked for asylum in Arakan for a few months and help in procuring ships. On his arrival at Mrohaung (Mrauk-U), the capital of Arakan, the king warmly received him through his ministers. A house was allowed for Shuja’s stay in the outskirts of the city. But as time passed, the king’s attitude to his guest changed; either for getting hold of rich treasures Shuja carried with him, or to get one of the pretty and cultured daughters of Shuja as his spouse, the king picked up a quarrel with Shuja. Shuja, his family and his retinue were tortured to death. A few of his retinue, fleeing to the countryside, could escape the gruesome murder, but none of the Mughal princes or princesses survived. [Abdul Karim]

Bibliography JN Sarkar (ed), History of Bengal, vol II, Dhaka, 1948; JN Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, vol II, New Delhi, 1972-74; A Karim, History of Bengal, Mughal Period, vol II, Rajshahi, 1995."

Daulat Qazi | BanglaPedia : National Pedia of Bangladesh
"Daulat Qazi (c 1600-1638) medieval Bangla poet, believed to have been born into a Qazi family in the village of Sultanpur in rauzan, chittagong. As his patronymic suggests, he was an educated person. Not getting any recognition at home, he left for Arakan, where he seems to have been received warmly. He was appointed court poet of King Sri Sudharma (Thiri-thu-Dhamma, 1622-1638) for whom he composed the poem Satimayna O Lorchandrani. He was able to complete only two-thirds of the poem before he died. alaol completed the rest of the poem in 1659.

Satimayna O Lorchandrani is a romantic narrative poem about the love of a feudal prince and princess. It is believed that the poet was influenced by two Hindi poems: Mainasat by Mian Sadhan and Chandainby Molla Daud. The Hindi poems, however, have a deeper spiritual meaning which is absent in Daulat Qazi's poem about human love. Daulat Qazi's genius is revealed in his measured verses and the beauty and charm of his descriptions.

A Sufi by faith, Daulat Qazi skillfully used the ramayana, the mahabharata, the epics of kalidasa andjaydev, as well as Vaishnava lyrics and folk tales in his poem. His language draws from the vocabulary of Arabic, Persian, Magh, Arakanese, Burmese, Sanskrit and the dialects of the Chittagong region.

[Amrita Lal Bala]"
 
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