Page:Assamese-Its formation and development.djvu/41

 AFFINITIES OF ASSAMESE 5 7. Whatever be the backward time limit of the river Karatoya having formed the western boundary of ancient Prag- jyotisa or Kamarupa, it is certain that in Hiuen Ts'ang's time it marked the westernmost frontier of the Kamarupa kingdom. It was of the language of the people of this kingdom when he said that " their speech differed a little from that of Mid-India. (Watters: Vol. II. p. 186) . It was under the patronage of kings outside the western limit of modern Assam, — under the patron- age of the kings of Kamatapur, fourteen miles to the south west of Coch-Bihar, that the earliest Assamese books were written. Even now the spoken language of North Bengal and western Assam (districts of Kamrup and Goalpara) is substantially the same and seems to form one dialect group. The points of difference between this western Assamese dialect and the standard colloquial of eastern Assam have been noted below (§§.33 ft). 8. The great author of The Linguistic Survey did not leave unnoticed the linguistic unity of North Bengal and Assam and he pointed to Magadhi as the common source of all the eastern dialects. 4> Magadhi was the principal dialect which corres- ponded to the old Eastern Prakrit. East of Magadha lay the Gau^a or Pracya Apabhrarhsa the head quarter of which was at Gaur in the present district of Malda. It spread to the South and South-East and here became the parent of modern Bengali. Besides spreading southwards Gauola Apabhrarhsa also spread to the east keeping north of the Ganges and is there represented at the present day by Northern Bengali and in the valley of Assam by Assamese. North Bengal and Assam did not get their language from Bengal pro- per but directly from the west. Magadhi Apabhrarhsa, in fact, may be considered as spreading out eastwards and southwards in three directions. To the North-East it developed into Northern Bengali and Assamese, to the south into Oriya and between the two into Bengali. Each of these three descendants is equally directly connected with the common immediate parent and hence we find North Bengali agreeing in some respects rather with Oriya, spoken far away to the south