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112 beginning of the nineteenth century, advanced its claim towards that end. But Āsāmese and Uriyā have now alienated themselves from Bengali. The people of those provinces declare that they possess a distinct literature of their own which is as old as Bengali literature; and indeed they do. The people of Chittagong, Tippera and Sylhet also possess old literatures stamped with provincialism of dialect, which now form a valuable part of our literature; but which are by no means any way nearer, in style and form, to the old literature of the Burdwan and Bānkurā districts, than are Āsāmese and Uriyā. The vanity of preserving the peculiarities of a small province may be natural amongst its own people, but it does not indicate a healthy state of feeling. The literary language of England has now reached a wonderful development because the American, the Irish, the Scotch and the Australian have all adopted it. There is no want of peculiarities and dialectical differences in the forms of this language as spoken in those countries; but these differences of the spoken language are not recognised in writing, and all these countries have submitted to a single grammar. The language has thus gathered strength from the co-operation of its votaries who recognise this unity in their literature, though politically many of them are not under the same yoke. Here is a passage which I quote as a specimen of the spoken dialect of Chittagong. No Bengali of the Western districts would understand a line of it and in the peculiar from which it exhibits, it would appear more remote from current Bengali than is Uriyā or Āsāmese.