SUDIPTA Shekhar Pal
Kolkata, West Bengal
Those who speak the Bengali language are Bengalis. From Tripura in the east to Purulia in the west, people across a vast region speak Bengali.
< ContentsYet, at times, the spoken forms of the language vary so much from region to region that doubts arise about whether all of them can be called Bengali. But one thing unites them all: everyone uses a universally accepted Bengali alphabet, whose pioneer was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. In 1855 AD (1262 in the Bengali calendar), he published the book Barnaparichay. This was a turning point in the history of the Bengali script. We may easily refer to the years before 1855 as the “pre-Vidyasagarian period.”
The true meaning of the book’s title, Barnaparichay, is “introduction to letters.” The sounds of the Bengali letters—অ (A), আ (Ā), ক (Ka), খ (Kha)—can be learned simply by hearing them, but to know which script represents the sound “Ka,” one must recognize its written form. This was the central purpose of Barnaparichay. However, Vidyasagar did not merely undertake this basic task, for before him many notable works in Bengali had already been written or translated. As early as the 16th century, works like the biographical epics Chaitanya Bhagavata and Chaitanya Charitamrita were composed, and even the Mahabharata was rewritten in Bengali. In all these works, Bengali script was used. Though, of course, the Bengali of those texts differed in several ways from the form in use today.
The oldest writings recognized by scholars as Bengali are the Charyacharyavinischaya. Its poems are believed to have been composed between the 10th and 12th centuries AD.
Thus, we may conclude that long before Vidyasagar composed Barnaparichay, Bengali had already been in use for nearly nine centuries, written in its own script. Yet Vidyasagar felt the need to reintroduce the alphabet with certain objectives in mind.
The 19th century was a period marked by the growing demand for modern education. Both Indian scholars and foreign educators desired that Bengali be taught in schools. But to teach, textbooks were required. The burden of writing Bengali prose thus fell upon the teachers. Vidyasagar himself wrote Betal Panchabingshati. At this time, he felt that Bengali prose required a standardized form. But before that, it was essential to determine which letters would be retained and which discarded. In short, both the written language and the alphabet needed reform.
Although Vidyasagar shouldered the responsibility of reform, the process had already begun in the minds of earlier writers. In the preface to the first part of Barnaparichay, he wrote:
“For a long time, the alphabet was considered to have fifty letters, sixteen vowels and thirty-four consonants.”
It is difficult to say exactly how long this “long time” was. But in children’s textbooks of that period, such as Shishushiksha written by Madanmohan Tarkalankar, there were indeed sixteen vowels and thirty-four consonants.
Vidyasagar, however, removed the long vowels “ṝ” and “ḹ” from the list of vowels. He also shifted the symbols for anusvara (ং) and visarga (ঃ) from the vowel group to the consonant group. Thus, the number of vowels became twelve. To the consonants, he added chandrabindu (ঁ), ṛa (ড়), ṛha (ঢ়), ya (য়), and t (ৎ), bringing the total to forty-one. Then he eliminated kṣa (ক্ষ), leaving forty consonants.
This shows that the inclusion and exclusion of Sanskrit letters in Bengali had long been underway. Barnaparichay was not merely an introduction to letters, but an introduction to the language itself. One sees this when turning its pages: alongside word formation, Vidyasagar began creating small sentences, thereby initiating a clear style of prose writing.
Of course, reforms in word and sentence structure had begun long before. Comparing the language of the Charyapadas with later writings makes this clear. For example, in the Charyapadas, the vowels অ (A), আ (Ā), and এ (E) appear not only at the beginning but also in the middle and at the end of words—such as jaa, gobiaa, obidarao, nashia, and so on.
In the Chaitanya Charitamrita, the ending vowel “আ” (Ā) had shifted to “ঞা” (nya), producing words like dhorinya and painya.
By the 19th century, in Raja Rammohan Roy’s writings (such as the Dialogue Between the Advocate and Opponent of Sati, published in 1818), spellings like koriya, loiya, thakiya appear. In these texts, the long vowels ṝ and ḹ are absent, showing that they had fallen out of use long before.
Still, they remained in writing, or else Vidyasagar would not have felt the need to exclude them explicitly. He kept “ḹ” (ৡ) but avoided its use. Since its pronunciation was equivalent to “li,” he clarified this with the example of the word lichu (lychee), showing that “li” alone sufficed.
Thus, Vidyasagar’s great contribution was to channel the long-flowing stream of reforms from Sanskrit to Bengali into a clear and definite path through his Barnaparichay.
But no living language can be bound permanently by rules. Reflections and debates about language continue. For instance, Rabindranath Tagore published Sahaj Path in 1337 of the Bengali era—seventy-five years after Barnaparichay. There, he excluded ḹ altogether. He also restored kṣa (ক্ষ), which Vidyasagar had treated as a conjunct letter, to the rank of a consonant by discussing it alongside other consonants.
In later years, several changes in spelling occurred. In Rabindranath’s own hands, Ūsha became Usha.
In the future, further reforms may arise as needed. Yet Vidyasagar’s Barnaparichay will remain forever in the heart of the Bengali people.
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