Assamese is the
eastern-most member of New Indo Aryan (NIA) languages in India, and is spoken
in the Brahmaputra valley in Assam. It is also the easternmost member of the
Indo-European group of languages which is the largest language group in the
world with a total number of speakers of more than half of the world
population. All the modern European
languages as well as those of Iran, India and Pakistan fall into this
Indo-European group. Amongst the
NIA languages, Assamese bears some unique characteristics which are not found
in other Indian languages.
In the past, Assam was known as Kamrupa, and the old
Assamese language had a much wider area of influence. In the days of king Kumar
Vaskar Varma who ruled the country in the seventh century, Kamrupa included a
greater part of north Bengal up to the river Karotoya on the west as well as
Bhutan on the north. Besides being
an early Aryan colony, Assam is also the habitat of the several non-Aryan
races, namely the Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman and Tai-Chinese speaking
peoples. The Bodo language group, to which belong the Kacharis, Rabhas,
Lalungs, Morans and Chutias to some extent, dominate the Tibeto-Burman family.
All these people as well as the neighbouring hill tribes have adopted Assamese
as the lingua franca which has given the people of Assam not only a separate
and unique identity but also has given them a delicate unity in this multi
racial Austric-Tibeto-Burman-Mongoloid-Aryan labyrinth of North East
India.
Historical Perspective: Assamese is a very ancient
language, a fact not very well recognized even by the Assamese. Many writers
believe that Assamese is a direct descendent of Sanskrit. However, the source
of Assamese “is nowhere to be found in Sanskrit or Vedic literature any more
than the sources of Italian are to be traced to the classical literature of
Rome.”(1) The source of Assamese is be
traced to pre-Vedic days when the Indo-Iranians lived together, prior to their
separate migration, somewhere in Afganisthan or to that common homeland from
which the roots of pre-Vedic Sanskrit as well as all early Indo Aryan dialects sprang. The date of evolution
of the Vedic Sanskrit as found in the composition of the Vedas is generally
taken to be around 1500 B.C. by the scholars. If we consider the fact that “…the Aryan civilization spread into Assam probably before
the composition of the Rig Veda.” (2) , this
will indicate that Aryan immigration to Assam must have occurred quite early,
probably around 2000 B.C. or before. The observance of the Aryan Bihu
traditions in Assam is another indicator, which also points to an early Aryan
immigration. “The tradition of the observance of the last day of the Asvin by
the Assamese people as a Dvishu day (Kati Bihu) entitles them to the tradition
of the Aryan culture of about 2200 B.C., when perhaps the first wave of Aryan
culture spread into Assam.” (3)
According to another
tradition, as recorded in the Kaliaka Purana, this is also the time when “the
present Assam area was ruled over by Ghotoka, a Kirata Chief, when Narakaxura
invaded the country in about 2200 B.C.” (4)
from Mithila and started the first Aryan colony in Assam. The country was then known as
Pragjyotishpur. These Kiratas were
believed to be of Austro-Asiatic race. We find in the epic Mahabharata, how, king Bhagadatta of
Pragjyotishpur, the son of Narakaxur,
later joined the battle of Kurukshetra on the side of the Kauravas with
a strong army of Kirata and Chinese soldiers. According to authority, the Panadavas were the new
comers while the Kauravas were the
early Aryan settlers in India. “The former (the Panadavas) with their
polyandric customs represent the new-comers, while the Kauravas are the earlier
settlers.” (26). Now it also
may be noted that Narakaxura belongs to an Axura tribe which is an earlier
pre-Vedic Aryan group, the main
branch of which immigrated to Persia and later established the worship of the
supreme deity, Ahura Mezda as the formless God. It is interesting to note that even today Assamese culture
has some striking correspondence with the old Persian culture as found in
Zend-Avesta. The
Persian language has also some correspondence with the Assamese language in
many respects including the common /x/ sound. All these traditions and linguistic reasons strongly support
an early Aryan immigration to Assam.
From these ancient past, the
Aryan roots of the Assamese language has greatly assimilated various other
elements into its body in Assam, notably of Bodo group of the Tibeto-Burman
family; and the old Assamese language evolved as the dialect of the of the
common people. In course of time, several waves of Aryan immigrants entered
Assam. According to one theory, these early immigrants were Alpine Aryans from
the Mediterranean. “During the
third millennium B.C., … the Alpine immigration poured into India, one branch
of them moving toward the western coast of India through the Indus valley and
the other branch pushing towards Eastern India.” (5) They must have come through the foothills of the
Himalayas bypassing the mainland India.
Assamese language bears some interesting correspondence to some
languages of the Himalayan foothills. It is also probable that some of them
came through one of the northern trade routes thru Tibet and Bhutan, which were
in common use in those times.
According to one source, “The route from Lhasa took two months to reach
Chounahat on the border of Assam, and four miles from border of Assam was
Gegunshar. The trade route with Bhutan and Tibet through Udalguri in Darrang
District along the course of the Dhansiri river is still in use.” (6)
It is probable that one energetic Axura prince by the name of Bana, have
come through such northern a trade route in one wave of Aryan immigration, and
established his kingdom in present
Shonitpur which is present
Tezpur.
After these pre-Vedic
Aryans came the Vedic Aryans from the mainland India. It is stated that Videgha
Mathava carried the torch of Vedic culture up to and across the Karatoya river
in the age of Satapatha Brahmana. (24)
This explains the fact that a large number of Assamese words are directly
derived from Sanskrit before the formation of Indian Prakrits.
From that ancient past,
the Assamese language evolved in partial isolation from mainland India, and
developed some distinct characteristics with Axura accents and
non-Aryan inflections. Thus
Assamese developed its own distinct characteristics quite early. So much so
that when Huan Tsang, the Chinese traveler visited Kamrup in 630 AD, Assamese
is a fully developed separate language.
Huan Tsang noticed these distinct characteristics of the language of
Kamrupa and he made it a point to record so, ”The language of Kamrupa differs
slightly from that of the midland” (7).
That was also the time
when the distinct Assamese script started to evolve based on the Ashokan Brahmi
script. The modern written
literary form of Assamese has developed since about 1000 A.D. as evidenced in
the “Charya Pada”. “Krishna Kirtan” and other manuscripts discovered. From
fourteen century Assamese literature may be said to have entered the classical
age when Madhab Kandali translated the Ramayana into Assamese, which happens
to be one of the earliest works of Indian vernacular literature in medieval
period. It may be noted that compared to the Assamese Ramayana, the Rmayana of
Krttivasa (Bengali) was composed in the fifteenth century, while the Hindi
Ramacaritamanasa by Tulasidasa was made only in the sixteenth century AD. Since that time, Assamese has developed
a rich and varied popular literature in poetry, prose and drama.
Linguistic Perspective:
Thus
we see that although Assamese shares a common Indo-Aryan linguistic heritage
with other Indian languages, it has developed certain peculiarities, which make
it unique among the other Indian languages. Being the farthest outpost of Aryan
migration towards the east, Assamese falls in the outer belt or in the
peripheral Indo-Aryan languages. As such Assamese has retained certain
characteristics of the parent Indo-European (IE) languages which have been lost
in other parts of India. Again
being in the outer belt, Assamese bears some striking correspondence with some
other outer belt languages such as Kashmiri in the north, and Guajarati and
Marathi on the west, “There are also some peculiar points in the Assamese
language which may be
characterized as extra Indian.”(8).
Some of these peculiarities may be due to its pre-Vedic (or non Vedic) origin.
A few of these linguistic peculiarities are described below.
