Languages and Literature of Assam

Languages and Literature of Assam

Languages of assam

Assamese

Assamese is spoken all along the Brahmaputra valley and sounds quite sounds quite similar to Bengali to a non-speaker (i.e. non-Bengali or non-Assamese speaker), but have significant differences, especially in grammar, pronunciations and vocabularies. The oldest Assamese writer was perhaps Hema Saraswati, who wrote his famous Prahlada Charita in the late 13th century AD. Madhava Kandali (14th century) was the next well-known figure, having written a vernacular Ramayana. Prominent among 15th century works were Durgavara’s Giti Ramayana, poems and songs from the Puranas by Pitambara and Manakara and the mass of literature called Mantras of unknown authorship.

Bodo language

A language of the Tibeto-Burman branch of Sino-Tibetan languages having several dialects. Bodo is spoken in the northeastern Indian states of Assam and Meghalaya and in Bangladesh. It is related to Dimasa, Tripura, and Lalunga languages, and it is written in Latin, Devanagari, and Bengali scripts.

Rabha language

Rabha is a Sino-Tibetan language of India. The two dialects, Maituri and Rongdani, are divergent enough to cause problems in communication. According to U.V. Jose, there are three dialects, viz. Róngdani or Róngdania, Mayturi or Mayturia and Songga or Kocha (page ix). Jose writes that “the Kocha dialect, spoken along the northern bank of the Brahmaputra, is highly divergent and is not intelligible to a Róngdani or Mayturi speaker” (page ix). Jose also writes that “[t]he dialect variations between Róngdani and Mayturi, both of which are spoken on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra, in the Goalpara district of Assam and belong to the northern slopes of Meghalaya, are minimal”. Jose concludes the paragraph on dialectal variation with: “The Róngdani-Mayturi dialectal differences become gradually more marked as one moves further west”.

Karbi

Despite of the 420,000 speakers spread across North-East Indian states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland—is one of the vulnerable languages of South Asia as identified by UNESCO. Karbi is grouped under the Mikir languages which itself is part of the 50-odd-languages that are known as the Kuki-Chin language group or simply known as Kukish languages. The last known census was in 2001 and the number of speakers might have increased by now but there are only a handful of people that are working for reviving the language. One of them is D.S. Teron who is a veteran and is a full time self-sponsored researcher based in the Karbi Anglong district of Assam. This page that is based on our conversation with Teron leads to some of the most important aspects of the Karbi language—like narration of a folklore, folk song, local festival celebrations and traditional games. The Karbi elders have been historically great storytellers, be it while recounting the past of deceased family members through Mosera Kihir, or the wailing songs of Kecharhe remembering the dead. Karbi is also known as Arleng or Mikir. Our guest, Mr. Teron is from one of the five clans that are also known as Kur—these are Terang, Teron, Enghee. Ingti and Timung.

Mishing language

Mising/Mishing, also known as Plains Miri, is a Tani language spoken by the Mishing people. There are 517,170 speakers, who inhabit mostly the Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Dhemaji, Dibrugarh, Sibsagar, Jorhat, Golaghat, Tinsukia districts of Assam. The primary literary body of Mising is known as ‘Mising Agom Kébang.

Literature of Assam

Probably the earliest text in a language that is incontestably Assamese is the Prahlada Charitra of the late 13th-century poet Hema Saraswati. Written in a heavily Sanskritized style, it tells the story, from the Vishnu-Purana, of how the mythical prince Prahlada’s faith in Vishnu saved him from destruction and restored the moral order. The first great Assamese poet was Madhava Kandali (14th century), who made the earliest translation of the Sanskrit Ramayana and wrote Devajit, a narrative on Krishna. The bhakti movement brought a great literary upsurge. The most famous Assamese poet of that period was Shankaradeva (1449–1568), whose many works of poetry and devotion are still read today and who inspired such poets as Madhavadeva (1489–1596) to write lyrics of great beauty. Peculiar to Assamese literature are the buranjis, chronicles written in a prose tradition taken to Assam by the Ahom people originally from what is now Yunnan, China. Assamese buranjis date from the 16th century, though the genre appears much earlier in the original Tai language of the Ahom.

One of the first plays to be written in the Assamese language was playwright and lexicographer Hemchandra Barua’s Kaniyar Kirtan (1861; “The Revels of an Opium Eater”), about opium addiction. His plays chiefly addressed social issues. Barua also wrote Bahire Rongsong Bhitare Kowabhaturi (1861; Fair Outside and Foul Within). Probably the most outstanding among the early modern writers was Lakshminath Bezbarua (1868–1938), who founded a literary monthly, Jonaki (“Moonlight”), in 1889 and was responsible for infusing Assamese letters with 19th-century Romanticism, which had by then begun to fade from Western literature. Later 20th-century writers tried to remain faithful to the ideals expressed in Jonaki. The short story genre flourished in Assamese with notable practitioners such as Mahichandra Bora (1894–1965) and Holiram Deka (1901–63). The year 1940 marked a shift toward psychological narrative, but World War II effectively put an end to literary development in Assam.

When writers resumed after the war, there was a clear break from the past. Also evident among Assamese writers of this period was the influence of Western literature. Perhaps the area of most unexpected growth was the development of the novel. Noteworthy examples of this form include Bina Barua’s Jivanar Batat (1944; “On the Highway of Life”), Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya’s Ali (1960; “Mother”), and Debendra Nath Acharya’s Anya Yug Anya Purus (1970; “Another Decade Another Generation”). The short story remained a popular genre, although writers began to experiment with an aesthetic that reflected the contemporary world. By the start of the 21st century, other new forms of literature such as the travelogue, biography, and literary criticism had also taken hold in Assam.