Assamese or Asamiya is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language. It serves as a lingua franca in parts of the Northeast India from a long time, in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland of India the Assamese language developed as a creole and pidgin language known as Nefamese and Nagamese creole which has become a lingua franca in Nagaland. It has over 15 million native speakers according to Ethnologue.
Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India has 22 officially recognised languages. Sahitya Akademi, India's highest literary body, also has 24 recognised literary languages.
Muhammad Shahidullah was a Bengali linguist, philologist, educationist, and writer.
Dramatic Prakrits were those standard forms of Prakrit dialects that were used in dramas and other literature in medieval India. They may have once been spoken languages or were based on spoken languages, but continued to be used as literary languages long after they ceased to be spoken. Dramatic Prakrits are important for the study of the development of Indo-Aryan languages, because their usage in plays and literature is always accompanied by a translation in Sanskrit.
Bengali literature denotes the body of writings in the Bengali language and which covers Old Bengali, Middle Bengali and Modern Bengali with the changes through the passage of time and dynastic patronization or non-patronization. Bengali has developed over the course of roughly 1,400 years. If the emergence of the Bengali literature supposes to date back to roughly 650 AD, the development of Bengali literature claims to be 1600 years old. The earliest extant work in Bengali literature is the Charyapada, a collection of Buddhist mystic songs in Old Bengali dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries. The timeline of Bengali literature is divided into three periods: ancient (650–1200), medieval (1200–1800) and modern. Medieval Bengali literature consists of various poetic genres, including Hindu religious scriptures, Islamic epics, Vaishnava texts, translations of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit texts, and secular texts by Muslim poets. Novels were introduced in the mid-19th century. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore is the best known figure of Bengali literature to the world. Kazi Nazrul Islam, notable for his activism and anti-British literature, was described as the Rebel Poet and is now recognised as the National poet of Bangladesh.
Shreekrishna Kirtana Kabya is a Bengali pastoral Vaishnava drama in verse composed by Boru Chandidas. It is considered to be one of the most significant works after Charyapada in the history of Bengali literature. These verses are believed to be written in the pre-Chaitanya era of the later half of 14th century CE.
Abahaṭṭha, Abahatta or Avahaṭṭha is a stage in the evolution of the Eastern group of the Indo-Aryan languages. This group consists of languages such as Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Maithili, and Odia. Abahatta is considered to follow the Apabhraṃśa stage—i.e. those Apabhraṃśas derived from Magadhi Prakrit.
Saraha, Sarahapa, Sarahapāda, was known as the first sahajiya and one of the Mahasiddhas. The name Saraha means "the one who has shot the arrow.". According to one, scholar, "This is an explicit reference to an incident in many versions of his biography when he studied with a dakini disguised as a low-caste arrow smith. Metaphorically, it refers to one who has shot the arrow of non duality into the heart of duality."
The Tirhuta also known as Mithilakshar or Maithili script has historically been used for writing the Maithili, an Indo-Aryan language spoken by almost 35 million people of cultural Mithila. It was also used to write Sanskrit language. The scripts of Maithili, Bengali, Assamese, Newari, Odia and Tibetan are a part of the same family of scripts.
Kānhapā, Kanha or Kanhapada or Krishnacharya was one of the main poets of Charyapada, the earliest known example of Assamese, Bengali, Maithili, Bhojpuri, and Odia literature. He was a tantric Buddhist and a disciplle of Jalandhar. Kanhapada is also a prominent siddhacharya to Nath Sampradaya after Matsyendranatha and Gorakhnath. His poems in Charjyapad are written in a code, whereby every poem has a descriptive or narrative surface meaning but also encodes tantric Buddhist teachings. Some experts believe this was to conceal sacred knowledge from the uninitiated, while others hold that it was to avoid religious persecution.
Luipa or Luipada was a mahasiddha siddhacharya from Eastern India. He was a Buddhist saint from the Kãivartā community. He was a poet and writer of a number of Buddhist texts and the Charyapada which is the earliest form of languages like Bengali, Assamese, Odia, Bhojpuri, and Maithili.
The Indian Classical languages, or the Śāstrīya Bhāṣā or the Dhrupadī Bhāṣā or the Abhijāta Bhāṣā (Marathi) or the Cemmoḻi (Tamil), is an umbrella term for the languages of India having high antiquity, and valuable, original and distinct literary heritage. The Government of India declared in 2004 that languages that met certain strict criteria could be accorded the status of a classical language of India. It was instituted by the Ministry of Culture along with the Linguistic Experts' Committee. The committee was constituted by the Government of India to consider demands for the categorisation of languages as Classical languages. In 2004, Tamil became the first language to be recognised as a classical language of India. As of 2024, 11 languages have been recognised as classical languages of India.
Twilight language or secret language is a rendering of the Sanskrit term sāṃdhyābhāṣā or of their modern Indic equivalents.
Bipradas Pipilai was a 15th-century poet. He was the son of Mukunda Pipilai, the family hailed from Baduria-Batagram in 24 Parganas, now in the Indian state of West Bengal.
Hara Prasad Shastri, also known as Hara Prasad Bhattacharya, was an Indian academic, Sanskrit scholar, archivist, and historian of Bengali literature. He is most known for discovering the Charyapada, the earliest known examples of Bengali literature.
Borgeets are a collection of lyrical songs that are set to specific ragas but not necessarily to any tala. These songs, composed by Srimanta Sankardeva and Madhavdeva in the 15th-16th centuries, are used to begin prayer services in monasteries, e.g. Satra and Namghar associated with the Ekasarana Dharma; and they also belong to the repertoire of Music of Meghalaya outside the religious context. They are a lyrical strain that express the religious sentiments of the poets reacting to different situations, and differ from other lyrics associated with the Ekasarana Dharma. Similar songs composed by others are not generally considered borgeets.
The Bengali–Assamese script, sometimes also known as Eastern Nagri, is an eastern Brahmic script, primarily used today for the Bengali and Assamese language spoken in eastern South Asia. It evolved from Gaudi script, also the common ancestor of the Odia and Trihuta scripts. It is commonly referred to as the Bengali script by Bengalis and the Assamese script by the Assamese, while in academic discourse it is sometimes called Eastern-Nāgarī. Three of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic—Bengali, Assamese, and Meitei—commonly use this script in writing; Bengali is also the official and national language of Bangladesh.
Kamrupi dialects are a group of regional dialects of Assamese, spoken in the Kamrup region. It formerly enjoyed prestige status. It is one of two western dialect groups of the Assamese language, the other being Goalpariya. Kamrupi is heterogeneous with three subdialects— Barpetia dialect, Nalbariya dialect and Palasbaria dialect.
Old Bengali was the earliest recorded form of the Bengali language, spoken in the Bengal region of eastern Indian subcontinent during the Middle Ages. It developed from a Apabhraṃśa of Magadhi Prakrit around 650 AD, and the first Bengali literary works date from the 8th century. Between 1200 and 1350 AD, no written form or literary work of Bengali language is found; during this period the Islamic invasion took place in Bengal. It is marked as the barren age, and also marks the end of the Old Bengali era, as the Middle Bengali language developed later.
