Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 49

MARCH, 1933)
BANGAL AND THE CITY OF BANGALA
BANGAL AND THE CITY OF BANGALA.
(Contributions to an old controversy.)
BY THE LATE SIR RICHARD C. TEMPLE, Br. IN 1921 Professor Suniti Chatterji sent a long note to Sir George Grierson on the old controversy about the "City of Bengal, Bengala, Banghella or Bangala" and on the term "Bengal " or "Bangal” itself, which Sir George passed on to me in reference to Dames's long footnote on the former in his edition of Barbosa, vol. II, pp. 135-145. According to the Professor, to a Bengali, "Bangala" means all Bengal and "Bangal," Eastern Bengal only. In that sense "Bangal” was frequently used in medieval Bengali literature, and nowadays it is held to be so much a matter of common knowledge as not to require tbe support of literary evidence.
The Professor wrote: “At the present day we call our province Bangala, or Bánlá, or Bangálå (Bánia)-des, the term embracing all Bengal, North, South, West, East; but, when we say Bångal (Bangal)-des, without the final -d, we mean Eastern Bengal, not specifically any particular tract, but all the eastern Bengali area where the language is characterised by some special phonetic and morphological characteristics (e.g., is, 8, dz pronunciation of c, ch, j; retention of the epenthesis, deaspiration of aspirates, e.g., bhagya West Bengali bhaggõ but pronounced báiggo, dropping the h, change of 6 to h, use of re and not ke for the dative; use of mu, future, for the 1st person). A Bengali speaker, no matter where he comes from, is a BÂn(g)ali, but Ban(g)Al is a man from Eastern Bengal. The forms with the wider oonnotation, Bångala, Bangalí, are recent, and to all appearance borrowed from the HindostAni (or Persian) Bangalah, Bangali. The other form, without the terminal d or i, is older, being normally developed out of Vangala, and retains the old connotation of the word. Bån(g)Al is a term of contempt, and a Western Bengali speaker habitually employs it in a disparaging sense, although the Eastern man would call himself also a Ban(g)ali. Sometimes an Eastern Bengali person would resent the use of the term Bangal from the accompanying tone or gesture of contempt, though he does not object to his patois and his part of the province being called Bang&lbh&går or Ban(g)&le, i.e., Bangaliyå katha) and Bangal-des. This contemptuous use of Bangal(a) we find as early as the twelfth century, at least. Sarvananda, a Pandit of Western Bengal, in his commentary on the Amarakósa (dated 1159) gives Old Bengali words in explanation of Sanskrit terms: and he explains the Skr, word sidhma, dried fish,' by a remark : Yatra vangala-vaccaranám pritih-' in which the low Bangal people find enjoyment.'”
Then by way of explaining the various terms for the Province of Bengal or its parts, viz.. Bangal, Bangala, Vanga, Vangala, and also Varendra, Gauda, Rådha and Samatata, the Professor made the following illuminating remarks: "Bangala, Bangali are convenient names for the language and people of the whole tract of Bengal, and Vanga-desa in the sense of the whole of Bengal is but a Sanskrit rendering of Bangalah in the sadhu-bháså : so also is Vanga-bhaşå of the zăbán-:-Bangilah. But that the form Bangal referring specifically to Eastern Bengal carries on the tradition of an earlier state of things when Vanga, Vangala (Bangala) meant the land or people of the eastern part of the province, is attested by epigraphic and literary remains. Thus, Bengal consists of four tracts : Varendra or Varendri or Gauda=N. Bengal ; Radhā=W. Bengal ; Vanga = E. Bengal, and Samatata=the Delta. Gauda, probably as early as the closing centuries of the first millennium A.D., came to mean West Bengal and North Bengal (Varendra and Radhā), and Samatata and Varga were used as synonyms of South-East and East Bengal. Fa Hian knew Samatata-Vaiga as Harikela, a name which is found in epigraphy, as well as in a medieval Sanskrit work, where it was called 'Harikelas tu Vaigiyah.' Epigraphic references can be found in R. D. Banerji's Palas of Bengal (Memoirs of the ASB., vol. V, No. 3, cf. pp. 44-45, p. 71, etc.). It seems then that in Western India, Vanga was loosely applied to all Bengal during the closing centuries of the first millennium A.D.- an application of the term, which, to some extent, was accepted in Bengal as well, and helped the adoption in modern times of the Western (Hindostani) term