Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/244

222 tribes (Barbaras), it has been said that they have not to speak their own speeches but that a few শবর peculiarities have to be introduced by them. It is highly interesting to note by the way, that in the list of non-aryan peoples or hordes, we get the আভীরs in the company of ওড্রs, শবরs, চণ্ডালs and so forth; these আভীরs have been mentioned by Hem Chandra of the 12th century as wholly অপভ্রংশ-speaking people.

The directions in the works on Dramaturgy that the domestic servants and artisans should speak the Māgadhi speech, may be interpreted perhaps by the fact, that from the 6th century onward, the people of various industrial occupations flowed from Magadha into other parts of the country. It will not be correct to hold, with reference to the statements in the works which are later in date than the Nātya Śāstra, that actual Māgadhi speech had to be spoken by dramatic characters representing the industrial or labouring classes. That the dramas had not really to be made polyglot in character, but only some suggestions had to be offered to the audience regarding the various provincialities of the Dramatis Personae can be clearly gathered from the rules occurring in the নাট্যশাস্ত্র; however to make the matter convincing an analogous phenomenon which occurs in our widely popular and very familiar Jātrā-Gān, may be noticed here. In this Jātrā-Gān, a person enacting the part of a door-keeper or a porter speaks Bengali slightly incorrectly, in the manner in which the Behāris at times speak Bengali, merely for this reason that the Behāris usually come to Bengal to do the work indicated above; the clown usually imitates Eastern Bengal provincialism by only substituting হ for শ all throughout. Here the door-keeper does not speak Behāri, and the clown does not care to imitate correctly the provincialism of our Eastern districts; the actors, by