The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language v1.c16.128

v1.c16.128

No inscription of Aśoka has been found within Bengal proper; this is strange, considering the proximity of Bengal to Bihar, the home province of the Maurya empire, and considering also the fact that Kaliṅga was conquered by Aśoka. But we know from the ‘Divyāvadāna’ that Puṇḍra-vardhana (North Central Bengal) was under Aśoka (‘Divyāvadāna,’ ed. by E. B. Cowell and R. A. Neil, Cambridge, 1886, p. 427). But the mere presence of an Aśoka inscription in Bengal, even if it were to be found, would be no evidence of the Aryanisation of the people in language. Aśoka inscriptions, for instance, have been found in Dravidian tracts, at Siddapur and at Maski in the Deccan and at Jaugada (Ganjam), where the Aryan tongue was never adopted by the people; and round about Dhauli, Aryan (Oṛiyā) is now spoken, but it is extremely improbable that the Aryan tongue was the vernacular of the people of Orissa (Kaliṅga) at that time. Khāravēla, the Jain King of Kaliṅga in the 2nd centnry B.C., has left a long inscription in an MIA. dialect. But as the Kaliṅga people were the ancestors of the speakers of modern Telugu, no Aryan speech could be adopted by the Kaliṅgas in the 2nd century B.C. The Aryan language, however, often came in the wake of the North Indian religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism and Jainism, and was used by royal patrons of these religions among Dravidian and other non-Aryans, merely as a sort of religious language, in documents of a religious, and often of an administrative, character. The advent of a northern religion in non-Aryan tracts certainly meant the coming of Aryan-speaking Brahmans, Śramaṇas or Yatis from the North. The influence of Aryan was felt in the non-Aryan languages in another way, namely, by the introduction of numbers of Aryan words into the latter. We can see from a few lines in Old Kannaḍa, given as a specimen of an Indian language in the papyrus fragments of a Greek drama from Oxyrrhynchus in Egypt, how great the influence of Aryan was on Kannada of the 2nd century A.C., when it had already begun to borrow Aryan words in large numbers (E. Hultzsch, *JRAS.*, 1904, p. 399). Like the Andhras or Kalingas, and the Karṇāṭakas, as well as other non-Aryans, it may be reasonably supposed that the pre-Aryan peoples of Bengal began to be influenced by the Aryan (or Upper Gangetic) culture and language immediately after Mithilā and Magadha were Aryanised. This may have taken place before 600 B.C. But for a long time, Bengal remained outside the pale of Aryandom; and it is hardly likely that there was anything like an appreciable Aryanisation east of Mithilā and Magadha and Aṅga before the time of Buddha. The Mahābhārata (200 B.C.—200 A.C. in its present form) mentions Bengal, no doubt, but there is nothing to show it was part of Aryan India when the original or even the received Mahābhārata was compiled.