Re: Bangla Desh
- From: "Neeraj Mathur" <neeraj.k.mathur@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 30 Jan 2007 18:04:42 -0800
On 30 Jan, 17:46, Joachim Pense <s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The "Desh" in "Bangla Desh" looks like the Sanskrit word "Desha"
'country'. Is it borrowed from Sanskrit into Bengali, or is it
inherited from that word?
Is it unusual to have a Sanskrit loanword in the language of a Muslim
Society, even prominently in the name of the nation?
First, generally speaking, NIA tends to have reduced all three OIA
sibilants into just one, although others have re-arisen at various
times in certain languages. In the Central and Western regions -
including the areas of Hindi and Punjabi - that sibilant tended to be
[s]; in the Eastern region, including Bengal, that sibilant was [S].
This means that an OIA word like /deSa-m/ would come naturally into
Hindi as /des/ (replaced in Standard Hindi by a re-borrowed /deS/ from
Sanskrit, and thus having a poetic/archaic character, being what you'd
find in Braj and other rural dialects), but in Bengali as /deS/. This
means that it is impossible on phonological grounds only to know
whether the word is a survival or a borrowing - the outcomes would be
identical.
On the other hand, it is very likely that the word in question,
certainly in the way it is used, is a Sanskrit reborrowing.
The socio-linguistic history of Bengali is very different from that of
Hindi/Urdu or Punjabi. While I have elaborated at length here on how
Khari Boli developed a Persianised and then a Sanskritised set of
literary registers which were in competition with each other,
eventually becoming associated with the Muslim and Hindu communities
respectively during the rise of nationalism and the struggle for
independence from Britain (leading to the bilateral communal massacres
of Partition in 1947), the development of Bengali has received little
attention here. I'm not the best person to tell the story, either.
Essentially, Bengali's literary registers were developed much earlier
than those of Khari Boli were, and almost entirely under Sanskrit
influence. Unlike in Central India, where the dialects that developed
literary registers were replaced by a different one in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries (Khari Boli in its guises as Urdu and Hindi
triumphing over Braj, Avadhi, various forms of Rajasthani, etc),
Bengali's literary language from its 'middle' period is pretty much
the direct ancestor of the modern standard language. As writing
conventions remain very conservative, there exist in Bengali both a
written register which essentially represents the Late Middle phase
(called 'Sadhu Bhasha' using Sanskritic transliteration, 'the good
speech') and a more modern variety (called 'Chalit Bhasha' or 'the
going/current speech').
Crucially, Bengal did not develop the same kind of communal tensions
during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that Central India
and the Punjab did. All Bengali people were united in their language,
and took equal pride in its literature (while, conversely, few Hindi-
speakers think of Ghalib as one of them). This translated into lower
levels of violence at Partition - though certainly not devoid of ethic
conflect, of course.
After Partition, the main leaders of Pakistan were men from the
Central region, Delhi/UP/Punjab or other major cities like Bombay
(since after all, the original purpose of the Muslim League was to
secure the rights for Muslims where they were minorities; the
separation of just the majority areas was a fairly late idea, and one
which did not address this problem at all). Having suffered through
the carnage to get there, they were often very much more zealous than
local leaders - and they all went West, to Karachi and Islamabad.
Punjabi was close enough to Khari Boli that the Urdu-speakers were
able to dominate; the result was a disenfranchisement of the Bengali
speakers in East Pakistan, despite numerical superiority (around 55%,
I think). The demand for an independent East was filled with local
nationalism, and this stressed the Bengali language. 'Bangladesh'
means 'the land of those who speak Bengali ('Bangla' in that
language)', and this stress on local identity did not require or even
desire a religious communal identity.
For language, the upshot of all of this is that there are not
distinctive 'Muslim' and 'Hindu' varieties of Bengali, as there are in
Khari Boli (Urdu and Hindi). Bengali is heavily Sanskritised,
particularly in its most formal registers, with a Perso-Arabic
component that is far more limited than even Punjabi or spoken Khari
Boli's.
So when you speak of Banagladesh as a 'Muslim society', it is
important to recognise that its people, at least at the time of their
independence from Pakistan, saw themselves as part of a 'Bengali-
speaking society' first and a 'Muslim community' second. There are no
qualms about the provenance of a word like 'des', since it simply
suggests an archaic / formal character in Bengali, rather than the
sectarian / religious connations that such words would have in Khari
Boli-based languages.
I hope that's clear and / or useful!
Neeraj Mathur
.
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