Kamrupi dialect

This article is about modern Kamrupi dialect. For old Kamarupi dialect,^[1] the Middle Indo-Aryan language used in ancient Kamrup or Western Assam,^[1][2] see Kamarupi Prakrit.

Kamrupi, a dialect of Assamese^[4] was the first ancient Aryan literary language spoken in Brahmaputra valley and North Bengal,^[5][6][7] developed primarily in the Kamrup region and North Bengal.^[8][9] It is one of two western dialect groups of the Assamese language, the other being Goalparya.^[10] The Kamrupi dialect is heterogeneous with four variants: Barpetiya, Nalbariya, Kamrupi and South Kamrupi. In medieval times, it is used by scholars and saints of Brahmaputra Valley and its adjoining areas for literary purposes in parallel with Sanskrit both for prose and poetry as against practices of literary figures of mid India like Vidyapati who uses Sanskrit for prose and Maithili for poetry.^[11] Recent times, the South Kamrupi dialect has been used in the works of author Indira Goswami with dramatic effects. Poet and nationalist from Assam, Ambikagiri Raichoudhury used Kamrupi in his works to great extent.^[12]

Definition of the region

Modern Kamrupi speaking region

The Kamrup between Manas and Barnadi rivers,^[13] where Kamrupi is spoken, formed the capital area of two of three dynasties of the ancient Kamarupa kingdom (4th-12th century), with Pragjyotishpura (Guwahati)^[14] and Durjaya (North Guwahati).^[15] Kingdom existed as parallel to Davaka of central Assam.^[16] Absorption of Davaka by Kamrup marks eastward expansion of latter,^[17] which ultimately covered area from the Karatoya in the west to the temple of Dikkaravasini at Sadiya in the east, Bhutan in north and Northern Bangladesh in south.^[18][19]

Modern day Kamrup consists of Undivided Kamrup district, which's west lay the Goalpara, where Goalpariya is spoken; and even further to the west lay North Bengal where Kamatapuri lects are spoken. To the east of this region, the eastern dialects of Assamese are spoken.

Ancient

Kamrup Kingdom

In the first half of seventh century, Yuan Chwang (Hiuen Tsang) visited Kamrup Kingdom then ruled by Bhaskar Varman, and noticed language spoken there is little different from mid India, which marked early Assamese or Kamrupi. This evidence convinced Upendranath Goswami that "Assamese entered into Kamarupa or western Assam where this speech was first characterised as Assamese. This is evident from the remarks of Hiuen Tsang who visited the Kingdom of Kamarupa in the first half of the seventh century A.D., during the reign of Bhaskaravarman."^[20] Suniti Kumar Chatterji notes that "One would expect one and identical language to have been current in North Central Bengal (Pundra-vardhana) and North Bengal and West Assam (Kamarupa) in the 7th century, since these tracts, and other parts of Bengal, had almost the same speech."^[21]

Kamrupi is initially spoken in Kamrup and areas later covered by Kamrup kingdom, spreading from its traditional boundary with the virtue of conquest.^[22]

Medieval

In early 17th century, the Mughals occupied Koch Hajo by defeating Prakishit Narayan, the Koch king, and established four sarkars (administrative units): Bangalbhum, Dhekeri, Dakkhinkul and Kamrup; placing Kamrup region in "Sarkar Kamrup",^[23] an area which according to some scholars is in harmony with ancient Shakti Pitha named Kamapitha.

Kamrup passed to the British in 1824, and the colonial district, largely congruous to the Kamapitha and Mughal Sarkar became the Undivided Kamrup district in the post-colonial period. The Kamrupi is currently prevalent in Mughal Sarkar of Kamrup.^[24] The examples of medieval Assamese or middle Kamrupi are obtained from the 14th century from North Bengal, Western Assam and fewer in central Assam, and this was followed by a deluge of literary activity in the 16th century that accompanied the growth of Srimanta Sankardeva's Vaishnavite movement. The literary activities occurred throughout Assam and North Bengal, and influence of Kamrupi remain strong throughout.

Kamrupi forms (in italics are easily discernible in the samples:^[25]

"manusya sahasrar madhyato kono janase punyabase gyanak lagi yatna kare" (Katha-Gita 16th-17th century)

During the 17th century Assamese became the court language of the Ahom kingdom, and the western dialectal influence on the literary forms continued.

"ake suni lakshminarayan ghila khedi ahil. bangale khaibak napai garar bhitarate sukhai mare (Kamrupar Buranji, 17th century)

"barphukane maharajat janova rup kari sihatar manuhak maharajar thaik anai..." (Tripura Buranji, 18th century)

Colonial

In late medieval times, Kamrupi literary style ^[26] passed to eastern Assam.^[27][28] Form spoken in Eastern Assam, come to notice due to translation of Bible in 1838 by American Baptist Missions, as part of conversion process. British adopted Eastern Assamese as the standard official language in 1873, due to recommendations of Christian missionaries.^[29][30] Whereas the Kamrupi was non-uniform, the eastern dialect was uniform over a large territory.^[31][32]

Modern

Since the center of literary activity has moved back to Guwahati in Kamrup, the standard has started acquiring Kamrupi dialectal elements in recent decades. For example, the instrumental case is -di in Kamrupi (hatedi, "with hand") and -re in eastern Assamese (hatere),^[33] and the Kamrupi form is increasingly common in the Standard.

These dialects are spoken in the present districts of Kamrup, Nalbari, Barpeta, Darrang, Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon. The name is derived from the ancient Kamrup Kingdom^[34][35] that existed from the fourth to the twelfth century, ruled by three major dynasties.

Scholarly views

Furthermore, the modern Bengali scholars like Suniti Kumar Chatterjee and Sukumar Sen^[36] have named the dialect of Bengali spoken in North Bengal as Kamrupi. Chatterjee writes, Assamese Kamrupi and Bengali Kamrupi is quite similar, the division possibly occurred due to political reasons and two forms dialect continuum.^[37][38] According to him, Magadhi Prakrit, keeping north of the Ganga river, gave rise to the Kamarupa Apabhramsa dialects of Western Assam and North Bengal. He divides Magadhan dialects regionwise as Radha, Varendra, Kamarupa^[39] and Vanga^[8][32][40]

Dr. Sukumar Sen says, "Oriya and Assamese have intimate relations with Bengali. All three were the same language initially. There is not much difference between Kamrupi dialect of Bengali and Assamese. Assamese has differed from Kamrupi in the modern period because of inclusion of innumerable Deshi words."^[41] He referring to ancientness of Kamrupi, writes, "Assamese, or more appropriately the old Kamarupi dialect entered into Kamrup or western Assam, where this speech was first characterized as Assamese."^[1]

Upendranatha Goswami writes, "The Assamese language, coming from the west was first characterized in Kamrup or Western Assam whose boundary comprised in early times the whole of North-Bengal, including Cooch-Behar, Rangpur and Jalpaiguri districts of Bengal".^[42]

According to Kanak Lal Barua, the Kamrupi dialect was originally a variety of eastern Maithili and it was, no doubt, the spoken Aryan language throughout the kingdom which then included the whole of Assam valley and whole of North Bengal with the addition of the district of Purnea. The language of the Buddhist Dohas is described as belonging to the mixed Maithili Kamrupi language.^[43]

Features

Phonology

(a) One of the most prominent features of Kamrupi is the use of initial stress, as opposed to penultimate stress in the eastern dialects, which effectively shortens the word^[44] (komora, Eastern dialect; kumra, Kamrupi dialect^[45]). Though standard Assamese follows the pan-Indian system of penultimate, Kamrupi shares the initial stress, with some difference, with the Bengali,^[46] where the initial stress system established itself as the dominant feature in the 16th century.^[47] In Kamrupi dialect too, the initial stress is a later development which is a result of contact with some linguistic group.^[48] Initial stress is typical to eastern Indo-Aryan languages, though eastern Assamese uses pan-Indian feature in penultimate stress.

(b) Medial vowels are thus rarely pronounced or largely slurred over.

(c) In standard Assamese if a word has two /a/ sounds side-by-side, the first /a/ turns into an /ɔ/ or /ɛ/, a feature that became prominent in writings of Hema Saraswati, Harivara Vipra, Kaviratna Saraswati etc.^[49] In Kamrupi, two consecutive /a/ are tolerated (star: /taɹa/ (Kamrupi), /tɔɹa/ (Standard)).^[50] The early Assamese uses pan Indian system of tolerance of both the parallel /a/.^[51] In disyllabic words, the second /ɔ/ becomes an /a/ (hot: /gɔɹam/, Kamrupi; /gɔɹɔm/, St. Assamese).^[52]

(d) Epenthetic vowels are the rule in Kamrupi dialects, with even diphthongs and triphthongs appearing in initial syllables (haula Kam; haluwa St) (keuila Kam; kewaliya St), and a complete absence of diphthongs in the final syllables.^[53]

(e) High vowels are feature of Kamrupi, in contrast to predominance of medial vowels in east Assamese. Kapur, tule, mul, tamul and khalu in eastern Assamese as against Kapor (cloth), tole (raises), mol (worth), tamol (betel-nut) and khalo (i have eaten) in Kamrupi.^[53]

Morphology

(a) Western Assamese shares morphological peculiarities with North Bengali. The plural suffixes in Western Assamese -hamra and -gila have parallel forms in North Bengali -amrah, the remote demonstrative plural and -gila, -gla.^[22]

The plural suffixes of Kamrupi are very different from the eastern Assamese (Kamrupi: -gila, -gilak; Standard: -bor, -bilak). Kamrupi plural suffixes has continuity from ancient times, as opposed to late medieval appearance of bor and bilak in Eastern Assam.

(b) Standard uses -loi in the dative case ending, Kamrupi uses the dative-accusative case ending -k or the locative -t (Kamrupi: gharot/gharok zau; Standard gharaloi zao). The third personal affix in the past tense is -lak (Kamrupi: xi khalak; Standard: xi khale).^[54]

(c) The instrumental sense -di in Kamrupi is increasingly accepted in the Standard now (Kamrupi: hatedi; Standard: hatere).

Similarities with standard Assamese

Though Kamrupi has special features that distinguishes it from standard Assamese, there are many commonalities—case endings, conjugational affixes, pronominal roots, derivatives and vocabulary—that underscore a fundamental unity.^[55]

Dr. Nirmalendu Bhowmik, while discussing similarity of Kamrupi with Assamese, observes that despite some similarity in morphology, there is absolutely no similarity in terms of phonology, though both languages shares few common words.^[56]

Comparison with Assamese and Sylheti/Bengali

Standard Assamese, Kamrupi and Sylheti share a common phonological structure. An example of this similarity:

History

In spite of dialect status today, Kamrupi is directly separated from Magadhi Prakrit, along with other middle eastern Indo Aryan languages like Radhi, Vanga and Varendri.^[37] This form of Apabhramsa, further gave rise to modern Assamese in east.^[58] All ancient and medieval Assamese literature is written in Kamrupi,^[59] before usage of eastern variety by American Christian missionaries, to translate bible in middle 19th century.^[60] Upendranatha Goswami write's:

"Politically, socially and culturally Kamrup formed a separate unit and its speech also was compelled to take a shape to form a distinct dialect. It is only by chance that this dialect had to lose its prestige and had to remain as a dialect".^[22]

Literature

Charyapada

The early examples of Kamrupi writings and literature are copper plate seals of Kamrupi kings, issued in different parts of eastern and Northern India and the Charyapada, which is a collection of 8th-12th century Vajrayana Buddhist caryagiti, or mystical poems. Being caryagiti (songs of realization), the Charyapada were intended to be sung. These songs of realization were spontaneously composed verses, that expressed a practitioner's experience of the enlightened state. A manuscript of this anthology was discovered in the early 20th century, by Hariprasad Shastri in Nepal. It provides the examples of the Kamrupi and other eastern Indo-Aryan languages. The writers of the Charyapada, the Mahasiddhas or Siddhacharyas, belonged to the various regions of Kamrup (Assam), Gauda (Bengal), Kalinga (Orissa) and Mithila (Bihar). A Tibetan translation of the Charyapada was also preserved in the Tibetan Buddhist canon.^[61]

The notable medieval Kamrupi literary figures are Rama Saraswati, Ananta Kandali, Sridhara Kandali, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, Kalapachandra Dvija and Bhattadeva, the father of Assamesc prose.^[62] Hema Saraswati and Haribara Vipra are two other well known Kamrupi poets. Hema Saraswati composed the "Prahlad Charitra" based on the Vamana Purana, while Haribara Vipra translated the Aswamedha Parva of the Mahabharata. Kaviratna was the author of the "Jayadratha Vadha". His home was at Sila, a village within the Barpeta district. The writings of all these three poets are still extant. To a some what later period belonged Madhava Kandali and Rudra Kandali. The former versified portions of the Ramayana and the latter composed, in Kamrupi verse, portions of the Mahabharata.

Sankara Deva who was born in 1449 A.D., refers to Madhava Kandali as one of the reputed poets belonging to an earlier age. It may therefore place both Madhava Kandali and Rudra Kandali towards the end of the fourteenth century. In his Ramayana, Madhava Kandali himself states that his other name was Kaviraj-Kandali and that though he could easily compose verses in Sanskrit he composed the Ramayana in Assamese verse for the benefit of the people at large. Madhava Kandali wrote also another poem entitled "Devajit." Sixteenth century, witnessed a great development of the vernacular literature of Kamarupa. The Yogini Tantra, a well-known Sanskrit work which gives the boundaries of the kingdom of Kamarupa, as it existed during the rule of the Pala kings, probably written in Kamarupa during the first pact of the sixteenth century. To this period it must also assign the compilation of the Behula Upakhyana by Durgabar Kayastha, a native of Kamakhya.^[63]

See also

• Kamrup (disambiguation)
• Kamrupi

References

Notes

Citations

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