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Chapter 4

A Brief Study on Assamese Language

4.1 A REVIEW ON HISTORY OF ASSAMESE LANGUAGE

Assamese (IPA:[mija]) is an official language in the state of Assam. Assam, which is

situated at the heart of northeast India, is spreading an area of 78,438.00 square kilometers

including 27 districts. It is recognized as regional language in the eight schedule of Indian

Constitution. Assamese language is also used as interstate communication language in many

north eastern states mainly in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. Apart from the states in the

Indian Territory, Assamese spoken people are also found in Assams Neighboring countries like

Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh. The approximate population of Assamese speakers in the state

Assam and its neighboring states is about 15 million. In the Indian Epics, Assam is referred as

Pragjyotisha. In classical Sanskrit literature, both Pragjyotisha and Kamrup take place as

alternative names of the country. The Burmese Shans, known as Ahoms, who were to transform

their name to the country and rule it for centuries, had traversed the lower ranges at the head of

the valley and were consolidating their power in upper Assam [19]. The traditional date of the

Ahom invasion is 1228 A.D. The powerful Ahoms came in clash with the Kacharis and drove

them down the south bank of the Brahmaputra and also pushed them out of Dimapur( now

capital of Nagaland ), the then Kachari capital. Direct British rule was enforced between 1826

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and 1832 and by 1838 Assam was included into Bengal and remained a part of the province until

a separate chief commissionership was set up in 1874 [19, 20].

The word Assamese is an adaptation of an English word, built on the same principle as Japanese,

Canarese etc. It is based on the English word Assam by which highlights the tract consisting of

the Brahmaputra valley. The Assamese people called their state sm(IPA:[m]) and their

language smy(IPA:[mija]). The word Assam was linked with the Shan invaders of the

Brahmaputra Valley. Since 1228 the easternmost part of the valley came under the domination of

a part of the great Thi or Shan race. The race is influenced and spreaded the whole eastwards

from the border of Assam over the whole India and far into the interior of China. Though the

Shan invaders referred to themselves as Ti, but in the due course of years, they came to be said

as sm. Bengali, Maithili, Oriya are closest connate languages of Assamese. All these

languages have their common foundation in the Magadhi Prakrit, which match to the old

Eastern Prakrit [19,22]. Assamese and Bengali are known to have continued their development

as the same language for the first two centuries of their history. But later, Assamese under her

independent kings and regional socio cultural situations developed its distinctive literature and

linguistic characteristics, and became disconnect from its closest cognate the North Bengali

dialect, which fell under the pan-Bengali umbrella. The map structure of Assamese language

dominant areas is as shown in the Figure 4.1.

The nerve root of Assamese language is Indo-European family of languages. The family can be

subdivided into three categories: the Dardic(or Pisacha),the Indic(or Indo-Aryan), and the

Iranian. Assamese is the easternmost member of the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) where both Indo-

Aryan and Indo-Chinese made their ways.

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Figure 4.1: Assamese language dominant area.

The Indo-Chinese group of languages is categorized into different sub-parts. In B. K. Kakoti's

Assamese: Its formation and Development (Ph. D. thesis)", has said that the loan-words of the

Indo-Chinese group are found in the Assamese vocabulary. The Tibeto-Burman group is largest

in its variety, of all the languages across Assam. It contains variety of racial groups. One of these

is the Bodo language group consisting of the Kacharis, the Koches, the Rabhas, the Hojais,

the Lalungs, the Garos, the Morans and the Chutiyas [23, 24]. All of these together contribute

in combination for the functional growth and development of the Assamese language. The

evolution of Assamese language can be depicted by the following Figure 4.2.

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Figure 4.2: The evolution of Assamese language.

The philologists have divided the Indo-Aryan languages of India into three groups based on their

special linguistic characteristics. They are namely- Midland, Intermediate and Outer.

Midland Group: This group covers Western Hindi of the Gangetic Doab and the eastern

division of Punjab.

Intermediate Group: The Intermediate group covers Gujrati, Marwari, Central Punjabi,

Nepali and Eastern Hindi.

Outer Group: Around the Intermediate group is the tie of outer languages which

includes Kashmiri, Western Punjabi and Sindhi in the northern part of India. It southern

part it contains Marathi. In the east part it includes Bihari, Oriya, Bengali and Assamese.

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The history of Assamese language can be classified into three major periods for its linguistic

peculiarities. They are:

4.1.1 Assamese Language Early Assamese

This era can be sub-divided into Pre-Vaishnavite and Vaishnavite sub-periods. The

Charyapadas, the Buddhist ballads of 8th-10th century some of whose creators were from

Kamarupa and the language of which bear strong relation with Assamese (beside Bengali and

Oriya), are considered the first examples of Assamese literature. The strength of the

Charyapadas are found in later-day Deh-Bicaror Geet and other aphorisms; and some of the

ragas found their way to the 15th-16th century Borgeets. This period saw the prosperous of two

kinds of literary movement: translations and adaptations, and choral songs [21]. Harivara

Vipra, a court poet of Durlabhnarayana (13301350) of Kamata, with his composition

Vavruvahanar Yuddha (based on the Mahabharata) and Lava-Kuxar Yuddha (based on the

Ramayana) gives the first date-able examples of Assamese literature. His Vavruvahanar

Yuddha, for instance makes indication to articles of the Ahom kingdom, which at that time was a

small kingdom in the east, and explains the undivided Lakhimpur region. In Lava-Kushar

Yuddha,he went away from the original and described local customs for Rama and Sita's

pumsavana ceremony. Other contribution in this period were Hema Saraswati's Prahlada-caritra

and Hara-Gauri-Samvada; Kaviratna Saravati's Jayadratha-vadha and Rudra Kandali's Satyaki-

pravesa.

The major work from this period was Saptakanda Ramayana, composed by Madhava

Kandali, and narrated in the court of a 14th-century Barahi-Kachari king Mahamanikya

(Mahamanikpha) who ruled either in the Nagaon or the Golaghat region. The pada form of

metrical verse (14 syllables in each rhyme with identical two syllables at the end of each foot in a

sonnet) became a standard in Assamese kavya works, something that continued till the modern

times. During this period mostly the religious literature like Hema Saraswatis vaishnava scripts,

Shankar Devas and Madhabdevs religious songs etc. were developed. Sankaradeva in a very

big way brought India into Assam and strongly associated Assam with India. He was followed

by his great disciple Madhavadeva (1489-1596). Besides his other works, the unique contribution

of Madhavadeva is the Namghosha in which the most sweet, powerful and melodious confluence

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of Philosophy and Rasa can be found. Shankaradeva emerged and stood as the guiding and

inspiring spirit to see a band of poets and dramatists and composers of songs, making their

powerful entrance into the arena of literature, culture and religion. Ramsaraswati translated and

re-created five books of the Mahabharata with liberty and he on the basis of the Mahabharata

authored a series of kavyas under the name Badha-Kavya. Ananta Kandali, Sridhar Kandali,

Kamsari, Gopalcharan Dwija, Kalapchandra Dwija, Haridev, Gopal Dev, Narayan Das Thakur,

Gopal Misra, Ramcharan Thakur, Govinda Misra, Purusottam Thakur, Aniruddha Dev, Daiyari

Thakur and about not less than four hundred writers emerged during the period of four hundred

years since the emergence of Sankaradeva till the end of the 18th century [19].

Moreover, Assamese prose literature also grew up during this period. Bhattadeva wrote the

Bhagavata Purana and the Srimad Bhagavata Geeta in prose in the early 17th century,

Raghunath Mahanta wrote the Ramayana in prose in 17th century and Chakrapani Bairagi told

the biographies of Sankaradeva, Madhavadeva and other Gurus in prose in 17th century. It may

be noted that no prose literature in other Indian languages was created till then.Choral songs

created for a popular form of narration-performances called Oja-pali, an ancestor to theater and

theatrical performances, came to be known as Panchali works. Though some of these works

were contemporaneous to Sankardeva's, they hark back to older forms free of Sankardeva's

impacts and so were regarded pre-Sankardeva literature [21,23,24].

4.1.2 Assamese LanguageMiddle Assamese

This is a period of the genre of prose production (Buranji) of the Ahom court. The Ahoms had a

natural urge for historical writings. The Tibeto- Chinese loan words were applied for the first

time by the Ahoms while writing their historical chronicles, but gradually in the course of time

the Ahom rulers adopted the Assamese language for their courtly matters and their historical

scripts too began to be written in the Assamese language. From the initial period of the

seventeenth century onwards, courtly Writings were developed tremendously. These historical

chronicles or Buranjis of the Ahom rulers consequently broke away stylistically from the Ahom

writers. This leads to the emergence of the new modern language with some modifications and

required alterations in grammar and spelling [21]. Among other important works of the 18th

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century are Anand Lahiri by Anant Acharya,some biographical creations (charitaputhis) on

Vaishanava saints, translation of Gita Govinda by Kaviraja Chakravarty and also some

technical literature based on Sanskrit works on different sciences like astrology, medicine ,

mathematics, music etc. The chronicles buranjis of the middle period were diverse from the

style of religious writers. The language was very modern except for slight differences of

spellings and grammar.

4.1.3. Assamese LanguageModern Assamese

The publication of Bible in Assamese prose by the American Baptist Missionaries in 1819 is one

of the most remarkable causes for the emergence of the Modern Assamese period. The pioneer

Banikanta Kakati too referred in his Assamese, Its formation and Development that the dialect

of Sibsagar of eastern Assam has its roots for the currently spoken Assamese language. The

American Baptist Missionaries used this dialect of Sibsagar for carrying out many literary

activities. Sibsagar was made centre of all literary activities carried out by the missionaries. The

missionaries used the local Asomia dialect for functioning their literary activities. They

established the first printing press in Sibsagar in 1836 and in the year 1846 started a monthly

publishing periodical called Arunodoi. Apart from these many other notable literary activities

took place including the publishing of the first book on Assamese grammar by Nathan Brown in

1848. Another notable publication by the missionaries was the first Assamese Dictionary, which

was completed by M. Bronson in 1867. In 1826 after the Brishers occupied the state Assam,

they at first had obtruded to circulate Bengali in Assam. But as a result of many successive

campaigning, Assamese was restarted as the state language in 1872. Since it was the Sibsagar

dialect of the eastern Assam that all the printing and literary activities were produced. It became

the dialect that was in use in courts, offices, schools etc and soon it was recognized as a formal

Assamese standard language. The first issue of monthly paper Orunodoi devoted to Religion,

Science and General Intelligence was published in January 1846. It included review of national

and international events, short critical essays on literature and Assamese culture, folktales, and

short, original poems. Maheswar Neog pointed out , That the Orunodoi was devoted to

science and General Intelligence is especially to be emphasized , as its pages went a long

way to extend the intellectual horizons of the readers. The columns brought various news from

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all corners of the globe. The news of the great events in India and in foreign countries were

brought to the door of the Assamese even as they took place [24].

In the mid nineteenth century, Anandaram Dhekiyal Phookan, Hemchandra Barua, and

Gunabhiram Borua were the trio among the writers of Assamese literature [24]. One particular

trend that this era established was the use of the colloquial in prose, as different to the rhythmic

speech patterns established by devotional literature. Anadaram Dhekiyal Phookan(1829-59) was

not only an early contributor to Orunodoi but an active participant with the Baptist Missionaries

to take out Bengali language from Assam. His essay A Few Remarks on the Assamese

Language (1855) encloses an account and analysis of 62 religious poetical works and 40

dramatic works. Where Dhekiyal Phookan could not fulfilled the task of writing a dictionary ,

Hemchandra Baruas (1835-96) most important work was his own Hemkosh (Golden Treasury) ,

an Anglo-Assamese dictionary published posthumously in 1990. Baruas contribution work was

linguistic as well as literary. His articles in Orunodoi, his dictionaries, and his grammatical texts

all sought to replace the simplified Assamese used by the missionaries with a version closer to

Sanskrit patterns of speech and to vigor the use of Assamese by native speakers. Like

Hemchandra Barua, Gunabhiram Barua (1837-94) was an ardent social reformer whose work

exposes his reformist zeal. His Ram-Navami (1858) was the first modern Assamese play. Asom

Bandhu a journal that he edited from 1885 to 1886 carried numerous essays by him and other

early essayists.

The Jonaki era known as the age of Romanticism in Assamese literature though by 1889 had

long faded in English literature. It would not be correct to view that writers of this era imitated

Wordsworth, Shelley or Keats rather they were strongly influenced by the Romantic sensibilities

of these English poets. During this period Asom Sahitya Sabha (Assam Literary Association )

was formed in 1917. The Sahitya Sabha made it possible the exchange of ideas, popularized

Assamese literature, art, and culture, and gave a forum for literary debate and argument through

its conventions, journals, and publications. Chandrakumar Agarwala (1867-1938), Lakshminath

Bezbarua (1868-1938) and Hemchandra Goswami (1872-1928) were the trio dominated the

literature of this Jonaki period. Where Chandrakumar Agarwala was a pioneer in poetry,

Lakshminath Bezbarua was the high priest of Assamese prose and is still considered to be so.

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Bezbaruas prose works are remarkable for their modern style and image, individualities found in

his novels, short stories, and essays [19].

In post independence literature (1950 to present) can be characterized as having a single,

common vision or belonging to a particular era. Literature today conclude a wide range of

poetry, novels, short stories, dramas, and different subgenres such as folklore, science fiction,

childrens literature, biographies and translations. Modern poetry carries many forms like some

poets still use traditional lyric forms and rhymes, where as others use blank and free rhyme in

ordinary rather than poetic, language. Navakanta Barua who began his writing in the 1940s, and

his poetic vision, expressed through a career that has spanned six decades, has recognized him as

one of the foremost poets of Assam. Dr. Bhupen Hazarika has achieved national fame as a

lyricist rather than a poet. Among the notable modern novelist we find writers such as Nirupama

Borgohain, Nilima Dutta, and Mamoni Raisom Goswami, Lakshiminandan Barua, Dr.

Bhabendra Nath Saikia [22].

We can say that the source of the vocabulary of Assamese language can be divided into the

following six categories [23]:

Words of original Sanskrit or Indo-Aryan coming through a slow process of linguistic

evaluation through the Modern Indo-Aryan (MIA) stage.

Words common to many New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages but not observable to the

earlier source.

Words borrowed at one time from other New Indo-Aryan languages.

Words of non-Aryan languages.

A certain number of English and other European words.

Sanskrit words either in original or in modified forms to outfit the intelligence or

phonological peculiarities of Assamese.

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4.2 PHONOLOGY OF ASSAMESE LANGUAGE

The fundamental unit of speech of a language is known as phoneme. Each language possesses its

own distinctive set of phonemes, typically distinguished by set of distinctive features based on

articulators, acoustic, or perceptual properties. Assamese scripts, derived from the Devanagari

scripts, consist of 52 (fifty two) symbols where 41 (forty one) consonants and 11 (eleven)

vowel symbols [23].

4.2.1 Vowels

Assamese has 8 (eight) vowel sounds (phonemes) though there are 11 (eleven) vowel scripts or

symbols. The classes of different Assamese vowels can be depicted and categorized by the Table

4.1.

The eleven Assamese vowel scripts are listed below.

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Table 4.1: Classification of Assamese vowels and their IPA representations.

Depending on the movement of articulations vowels are categorized into two types:

monophthongs and diphthongs.

Monophthongs

Monophthong is a sound of a single vowel. A monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose

articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down

towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs in Assamese language occur in all the

three positions, namely word initially, medially and finally. Examples are listed in the Table 4.2

below:

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Table 4.2: Monophthongs used in Assamese language.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are two vowels produced consecutively in the same syllable by moving the

articulators smoothly from the position of one to the other. A diphthong is also known as a

gliding vowel which refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable.

There are ten diphthongs in Assamese Language. They are listed in the Table 4.3:

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Table 4.3: Diphthongs used in Assamese language.

4.2.2 Consonants

There are 23 (twenty three) consonant sounds (phonemes) in Assamese language out of which

2(two) are semi vowels even though there are 41 (forty one) consonant symbols in Assamese

languages. The consonant phonemes can be depicted and classified as shown in the Table 4.4.

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The Assamese scripts consonants symbols are listed below:

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Table 4.4: Classification of Assamese consonants and their IPA representations.

The consonant sounds in Assamese language occur in all the three positions, namely word

initially, medially and finally. The occurrences of the Assamese consonants are listed below in

Table 4.5:

Table 4.5: Assamese consonants and their IPA representations.

Consonant Initially Medially Finally

/p/ /pat/ leaf /zapi/ traditional hat /ap/ snake

/ph/ /p

hat/ crack

/lopha/ a green leafy

vegetale

/maph/

pardon

/b/ /bat/ road /habi/ jungle /sab/ imprint

of a seal

/bh/ /b

hat/ cooked rice /ba/ meeting

/lab/

benefit

/t/ /tel/ oil /ata/ flour /bat/ road

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/th/ /tai/ place /ata/ glue /mut/ total

/d/ /dima/ egg /ada/ ginger /md/ wine

/dh/ /dam/ holy place /ada/ half /band/ tie

/k/ /kam/ work /sika/ rodent /dak/ by

post

/kh/ /kam/ envelope /akr/ letter /rak/ keep

/g/ /ura/ small particle /poa/ boil /da/ stain

/gh/ /at/ river bank

/poa/ rope used for

tying a cow /bag/ tiger

/m/ /mat/ voice / /hami/ yawn /tam/

copper

/n/ /nat/ drama /dani/ donor /kan/ ear

// ----------- /ii/ a kind of fish /ba/ break

/s/ /spta/ flat /sa/ true /bes/ well

done

/z/ /za/ go /azi/ today /bez/

appearance

// /at/ seven /aa/ hope /da/ slave

/h/ /hat/ hand -------------- /bh/ sit

/r/ /rn/ war /ari/ a kind of fish /kapor/

cloth

/l/ / l/ take /ali/ road /al/ cheek

/w/ ------------- /swadin/

independent --------------

/j/ ------------- /bidja/ learning --------------

4.3 SYLLABLE STRUCTURE IN ASSAMESE WORD

The syllable is a single or combination of phonemes in a word articulated in a single chest pulse.

It is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word /water/ is

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composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus

(most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are

considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a

language, its prosody, its poetic meter and its stress patterns [23].

A word that consists of a single syllable is called a monosyllable (and is said to be

monosyllabic). Similar terms include disyllable (and disyllabic) for a word of two syllables;

trisyllable (and trisyllabic) for a word of three syllables; and polysyllable (and polysyllabic),

which may refer either to a word of more than three syllables or to any word of more than one

syllable.

Syllable is an element of sound which is larger than phoneme and smaller than a word.

Syllabification algorithms are mainly used in Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems in producing

natural speech sound, and in speech recognizers in detecting out-of-vocabulary words. Syllable

plugs the gap between a phonemes and words. It may build by only one vowel or a combination

of one vowel and a consonant or more consonants.

A syllable ending in a vowel is termed as opened and a syllable ended in a consonant is called

closed. Assamese words may be one of two types-monosyllabic, having one syllable and

polysyllabic, having more than one syllable.

When a word is broken down into its syllables the process is called syllabification. Some of the

syllable structures of Assamese words are V, VC, CV, and CVC. [vowel (V), consonant(C)]

which are depicted with examples in the Table 4.6.

Table 4.6: Assamese syllable structure with examples.

Syllable Type Example

v i ( meaning: he, she, it)

vc a-m(meaning: mango),

a-n(meaning: to bring)

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cv K

h-a(meaning: to eat),

l-(meaning: to take)

cvc k-a-l(meaning: time),

t-i-l(meaning: a oil seed)

Examples:

Monosyllabic word: [i] (), [si] (), [am] (), [ga] (), [nas] (), [l] () etc.

Disyllabic word: [s-ku] (), [ra-ti](), [bn-dr](!), [an-dhar](#), [zi-bon] (), [gr-b] ()), [ba-gan] () etc.

Trisyllabic word: [g-h-na] (), [m-r-mr] (), [za-za-br] (), [a-nn-d] (!), [gu-rut-t] (-./), [-h-kar] () etc. Quadrisyllabic word: [a-ra-d

h-na] (), [o-bhi-bha-bk] (), [-a-dha-rn]

(), [a-br-z-na] ()) etc.

Pentasyllabic word: [a-b-dha-n-ta] (), [-br-n-ni-y] ()), [--mr-thi-t]

()) etc.

And so on.