Page:The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language Part 1.pdf/102



1. Bengali is a member of the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian or Aryan branch of the Indo-European family of languages. With its sister-speech Assamese, Bengali forms the easternmost language in the IE. linguistic area, just as the Celtic Irish and the Germanic Icelandic are the westernmost. It has been in existence as an independent and characterised language, or, rather, as a distinct dialect group, for nearly ten centuries.

2. Among the languages and dialects of India, Bengali is the speech of the largest number of people, 48,367,915 persons having returned it as their mother-tongue during the census of 1911. Bengali is spoken by 92 per cent. of the population of the province of Bengal; and portions of Assam and of Bihar and Orissa linguistically form parts of Bengal. Bengali shades off into its sister-languages Oṛiyā, Magahī and Maithilī in the west, and into Assamese in the north-east. Apart from other Indo-Aryan speeches, notably Hindōstani (which is spoken with varying degrees