Bengali and Other Related Dialects of South Assam (An Old and Rare Book)

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South Assam, by which the Old Cachar region and the present Cachar and Karimganj districts are known, is a very important linguistic area. The present work gives a description of the dialects of this region. These dialects are Cachar Bengali, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Dheyan, Cachar Hindustani and Cachar Oriya. The last two are the descendants of the immigrants brought as tea garden labourers in the late last and early this century. Cachar Bengali is the Bengali as spoken in Cachar and Karimganj and is very dosely linked with Sylhet Bengali of Sylhet in Bangaladesh. The two are customarily called Sylheti in outside world.

The present work is a comparative and descriptive study of languages and can be roughly called a survey of the dialects of South Assam, although a few dialects present in the region have not been considered at all. These are the speeches of Tibeto-Burmese group and as such they do not come up. However, the work deals with the dialects under survey from the view of ethnography as well as ethnology and then analyses them phonetically, historically and comparatively. Comparison is made with each of these dialects and languages as also with the languages from outside like Standard Bengali, Assamese, Hindi and Oriya. Never before such a broad-based survey had been undertaken in the region. The present study is important from another aspect also. This is the only comprehensive research on South Assam dialects which has resulted in a large number of valuable findings, some of them completely new for the Indo-Aryan linguists.

Dr. Sudhansu S. Tunga (b. 1936) obtained his B.A. (Hons.) Degree in 1960 from Calcutta University and triple M.A. (Bengali, English & Comparative Philology) from the same University in 1962, 1965 and 1969 respectively. He was awarded D. Litt. Degree in Comparative Philology and Linguistics by the Calcutta University in 1981.

Dr. Tunga served for a short stint as Programme Executive in A.I.R., Patna in 1963. He started his teaching career in 1964 and is currently serving as Professor in Bengali in Gauhati University.

He is life Member of Linguistic Society of India, Pune and Linguistic Society of Assam, Guwahati. He is Member, Asiatic Society, Calcutta, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, Calcutta and North East India Council for Social Science Research, Shillong. He is the author of (i) Ami Ek Sadagar (A collection of in Bengali), Calcutta, 1960 (ii) Santir poems Pakhira Ebong Tumi (A collection of poems in Bengali), Calcutta, 1961 and (ii) Banglar Baire Bangla Gadyer Carca: Sodas-Astadas Satak (A Reference book on early Bengali prose), Calcutta University, Calcutta, 1984 He has also over two dozen learned papers published in various journals.

The following pages are a description of the dialects of Cachar in South Assam. These dialects are Cachar Bengali, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Dheyan, Cachar Oriya and Cachar Hindustani. The last two are the speeches confined in the tea gardens area only being spoken by the descendants of the immigrants brought as tea garden labourers in the late last and early this century. Cachar Bengali is the Bengali as spoken in Cachar and is closely linked with Sylhet Bengali of Sylhet in Bangladesh. The two are customarily called Sylheti in the outside world. Bishnupriya Manipuri is a speech spoken by a people also known as Bishnupriya Manipuri in contradistinction to the Meithei Manipuri or the Manipuri proper; it is affiliated to Bengali, having many similarities with Cachar Bengali and other E.B. Dialects; there are also some Meithei loans in it. Dheyan is a peculiar dialect, midway between Bengali and Assamese although it seems to be tending more towards Assamese than Bengali. The dialect is spoken by a small community, also known as Dheyan, akin to the Rajbanshi of North Bengal.

I must confess that none of the speeches comes anywhere near to standard Bengali. Being born and brought up in West Bengal I had, frankly, no idea about the linguistic situations of Cachar before 1966. In that year I came to Shillong as a college lecturer. It is here that I heard for the first time the Bengali of Cachar-Sylhet and was deeply attracted by it. Afterward, while I joined Gauhati University in 1968, I found more opportunity to study the speech. Many of my students were, as they still are, from Cachar from whom more information was available and in fact I learned the language from them. Later, I made a proposal to the Gauhati University for a survey of dialects in Cachar which was accepted. Accordingly, I undertook, for collection of first-hand information, field works which were carried during the years 1973-76. It is during this field survey that the existence of other languages, viz. Dheyan, Cachar Oriya, Cachar Hindustani, etc. was known. These dialects were never known to the outside world. Even now Dheyan remains entirely unknown a few miles away from its area of currency.