Haraprasad Shastri (18531931) Charyapada is also the collection of the oldest verses written in pre-Modern Bengali Although Haraprasad

Shastri discovered as many as 47 poems (in fact 46 and a part of one), hints are there that the number would be 51 in total. These were written on narrow section of palm leaves. Later Prabodhchandra Bagchi published a manuscript of a Tibetan translation containing 50 verses The Charyapada (Bengali: , Assamese: , Oriya: ) is a collection of 8th-12th century Vajrayana Buddhist caryagiti, or mystical poems from the tantric tradition in eastern India. Haraprasad Shastri, who discovered Charyapada, considered that it was written during the 10th century. However, according to Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, Charyapada was composed between 10th and 12th century. Probodh Chandra Bagchi upholds this view. Sukumar Sen while supporting this view maintained that Charyapada could have been written between 11th and 14th century.[5] However, Muhammad Shahidullah was of the opinion that Charyapada dates back to earlier time. He maintained that it was likely to have been composed between 7th and 11th century.[6] Rahul Sankrityayan thought that Charyapada was probably written between 8th and 11th century. The language of Charya was considered as Prakrta. In his book (Ascharya Charyachaya) Karunakar Kar has mentioned that Orissa is the origin of Charyapada as the Vajrayana school of Buddhism evolved there and started female worship in Buddhism Buddhist scholars like Indrabhuti and Lakshminkara and Padmasambhava were born in Orissa. he earliest extant work in Bengali literature is Charyapada, the Buddhist mystic songs dated to the 10th and 11th centuries.The Turkish invasion of 1199 disrupted all literary activity until the mid-14th century. Thereafter, the timeline of Bengali literature is divided into two periods medieval (1360-1800) and modern (after 1800). Novels and Epics were introduced to Bengali literature in the mid-19th century. The first works in Bengali, written in Old Bengali,[1] appeared between 10th and 12th centuries C.E

Pre-Chaitanya Vaishnava Literature

Pre-Chaitanya or Early Vaishnava literature denotes the literature of the time preceding the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. These include: Sri Krishna Kritana by Boru Chandidas; lyrical poems, known as the Vaishnava Padavali of Vidyapati and Chandidas; Sri Krishna Vijaya, the partial translation of Bhagavata Purana by Maladhar Basu and Krittivasi Ramayana by Krittivas Ojha.
Krittibas Ojha (Bengali: ) or Kirttibas Ojha (Bengali: )[1] (13811461) was a medieval Bengali poet. Chandidas (Bengali: ; born 1408 CE) refers to (possibly more than one) medieval poet of Bengal. Over 1250 poems related to the love of Radha and Krishna in Bengali Sri Krishna Kirtana was written by Boru Chandidas in the later half of 14th century CE. It is considered as the second oldest work of Bengali literature after Charyapada. The 15th century is marked by the emergence of Vaishnava lyrical poetry or the padavali in Bengal. The poetry of Vidyapati, the great Maithili poet, though not written in Bengali, influenced the literature of the time so greatly that it makes him a vital part of Middle Bengali literature. He flourished in the modern-day Darbhanga district of Bihar, India in the 14th century. His Vaishnava lyrics became very popular among the masses of Bengal. The first major Bengali poet to write Vaishnava lyrics was Chandidas, who belong to the modern-day Birbhum district (or, according to another opinion, Bankura district), Paschimbanga in the 15th century. Chandidas is also known for his humanist proclamation"Sabar upare manush satya, tahar upare nai" (" , ")"The supreme truth is man, there is noting more important than he is." Works of both Vidyapati and Chandidas, along with Jayadevas Gita Govinda were known to the favourites of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

The Bengali translations of two great Sanskrit texts the Bhagavata Purana and the Ramayana played a crucial role in the development of Middle Bengali literature. Maladhar Basus Sri Krishna Vijaya ( , Triumph of Lord Krishna), which is chiefly a translation of the 10th and 11th cantos of the Bhagavata Purana, is the earliest Bengali narrative poem that can be assigned to a definite date.[2] Maladhar Basu flourished in the modern-day Bardhaman district of Paschimbanga in the 15th century.[2] Composed between 1473 and 1480 C.E.,[3] Sri Krishna Vijaya is also the oldest Bengali narrative poem of the Krishna legend.[2] The Ramayana, under the title of Sri Rama Panchali, more popularly known as the Krittivasi Ramayana, was translated by Krittivas Ojha who belonged to the modern-day Nadia district, Paschimbanga.[4] He also, like Maladhar Basu, flourished in the 15th century.[4]
Mangal-Kvya (, "Poems of Benediction"), a group of Hindu narrative poetry, composed more or less between 13th Century and 18th Century, eulogise the indigenous deities of rural Bengal in the social scenario of the Middle Ages.

In 1814, Raja Ram Mohan Roy arrived in Calcutta and engaged in literary pursuits. Translating from Sanskrit to Bengali, writing essays on religious topics and publishing magazines were some the areas he focussed on. He established a cultural group in the name of 'Atmiya Sabha' (Club of Kins) in 1815. Another significant contributor of Bengali literature in its early stage was Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyaya. In 1859-1860). a great drama was published from Dhaka in the name of 'Neel Dorpon' (The Indigo Mirror). Dinabandhu Mitra was the writer of this play. Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873) introduced blank verse (Amitrakshar Chhanda) Dutts first epic Tilottama Sambhab Kabya ( , Birth of Tilottama) was published in 1860. This was the first Bengali poem written in blank verse. The story of Tilottama Sambhab Kabya is taken from Hindu Puranas Dutt also wrote four playsSharmishtha (, 1859), In this time, Michael Madhusudan Dutt emerged as the first epic-poet of modern Bangla literature. Dutt, a Christian by conversion, is best known for his Ramayanabased masterpiece, "The Slaying of Meghnadh," (in Bengali "Meghnadh Bodh Kabyo" ( )), which essentially follows in the poetic tradition of Milton's Paradise Lost. He ruled the Bangla literature world for more than a decade (18581863) Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (18381894) is considered one the leading Bengali novelist and essayist of the 19th century. His first novel Durgeshnandini, which is also the first major novel in Bengali literature, was published in 1865.[5] He wrote "Vande Mtram", the national song of India, which appears in his other novel Anandamath (1882).[ he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 The Bengali script evolved from the Siddham, which belongs to the Brahmic family of scripts, along with the Devanagari and other written systems of the Indian subcontinent

The Bengali script was originally not associated with any particular language, but was often used in the eastern regions of Medieval India. It was standardized into the modern Bengali script by Ishwar Chandra under the reign of the British East India Company. The script was originally used to write Sanskrit. Epics of Hindu scripture, including the Mahabharata or Ramayana, were written Mithilakshar/Tirhuta script in this region. After the medieval period, the use of Sanskrit as the sole written

language gave way to Pali, and eventually to the vernacular languages we know now as Maithili, Bengali, and Assamese.There is a rich legacy of Indian literature written in this script, which is still occasionally used to write Sanskrit today. Bengali evolved circa 10001200 AD from the Magadhi Prakrit, which developed from a dialect or group of dialects that were close to, but different from, Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. In former East Bengal (today Bangladesh), the strong linguistic consciousness led to the Bengali Language Movement, during which on 21 February 1952, several people were killed during protests to gain its recognition as a state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan. Bengali arose from the eastern Middle Indo-Aryan languages of the Indian subcontinent. Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, the earliest recorded spoken languages in the region and the language of the Buddha, evolved into the Jain Prakrit or Ardhamagadhi "Half Magadhi" in the early part of the first millennium CE. Ardhamagadhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North India, began to give way to what are called Apabhraa ("Corrupted grammar") languages just before the turn of the first millennium.[9] The local Apabhraa language of the eastern subcontinent, Purvi Apabhraa or Abahatta ("Meaningless Sounds"), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the Bihari languages, the Oriya languages, and the Assamese-Bengali languages. Some argue that the points of divergence occurred much earliergoing back to even 500[10] but the language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. For example, Magadhi Prakrit is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for a period of time.[ 1. Old Bengali (900/10001400)texts include Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence

of pronouns Ami, tumi, etc.; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Assamese (Ahomiya) branches out in this period and Oriya just before this period (8th century-1300). The scripts and languages during this period were mainly influenced by the Kamrupi language (scriptKamrupa Prakrit) as the entire region- Assam, Bengal and parts of Bihar and Orissa was under the Kamrupa kingdom (now known as Assam). 2. Middle Bengali (14001800)major texts of the period include Chandidas's Shreekrishna Kirtana; elision of word-final sound; spread of compound verbs; Persian influence. Some scholars further divide this period into early and late middle periods. 3. New Bengali (since 1800)shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar tar "his"/"her"; koriyachil korechilo he/she had done).
Historically closer to Pali, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (Chaitanya Mahaprabhu era) and also during the Bengal Renaissance.[12][citation needed] Of the modern Indo-European languages in South Asia, Bengali and its neighbors, Oriya and Assamese (Ahomiya), in the east maintain a largely Pali/Sanskrit vocabulary base, as doesMarathi in the center-west. Standard

Hindi and others such as Punjabi, Sindhi and Gujarati are more influenced by Arabic and Persian.[13]

Until the 18th century, there was no attempt to document Bengali grammar. The first written Bengali dictionary/grammar, Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido em duas partes, was written by the Portuguese missionary Manuel da Assumpo between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in Bhawal Estate.[14] Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar (A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali types in print for the first time.[1] Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali reformer,[15] also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832). During this period, the Coltibhasha form, using simplified inflections and other changes, was emerging from Shadhubhasha (older form) as the form of choice for written Bengali.[16]
he Assamese/Bengali Script is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE[45] and is similar to the Devanagari abugida used for Sanskrit and many modern Indic languages (e.g. Hindi, Marathi and Nepali). The Bengali script has particularly close historical relationships with the Assamese script, and Mithilakshar (the native script for Maithili language) and little resemblance with the Oriya script (although this relationship is not strongly evident in appearance).[46]

Bengali has as many as 100,000 separate words, of which 50,000 are considered ttshmo (direct reborrowings from Sanskrit), 21,100 are tdbhbo (native words with Sanskrit cognates), and the rest being bideshi (foreign borrowings) and deshi (Austroasiatic borrowings) words. However, these figures do not take into account the fact that a large proportion of these words are archaic or highly technical, minimizing their actual usage. The productive vocabulary used in modern literary works, in fact, is made up mostly (67%) of tdbhbo words, while ttshmo only make up 25% of the total.[54][55] Deshi and Bideshi words together make up the remaining 8% of the vocabulary used in modern Bengali literature.