Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/30

8 speech of various tribes and races who were once keen in maintaining their tribal integrity by living apart from one another, over the vast area of eighty thousand square miles.

Bengali is called a Sanskritic language by some philological scholars, but what these scholars definitely mean by the term Sanskrit is not always explicitly stated. If we can only tolerate such a loose use of the term as to make it indicate indiscriminately the Chhāndasa speech of the early Vedic days as well as the speech which Pānini described as Laukika, the nomenclature of the philological scholars may be allowed to stand. I consider it, however, safer to call the Bengali speech as an Aryan vernacular to avoid the suggestion that the language in which the poets from Kālidāsa to Jayadeva composed their works was the progenitor of Bengali. It has to be distinctly borne in mind that the word "Aryan," as used by me, has not even remotely any ethnic significance; it will indicate the Vedic speech and those speeches which are allied to, or have affinity with, the Vedic speech.

Let me repeat explicitly what I have suggested above just now: that a language is mainly, if not wholly, determined by its grammar or structure and not by its vocabulary which may always swell by the process of word-borrowing. I should also add here that the accent system is a great factor in a language, and should be considered as an essential element of it; different forms of "apabhramśa" in different dialects of one common original speech are partly due to different accent systems. It will be necessary, therefore, to refer to the accent systems of our neighbouring tribes to solve some points of difficulty. In ignorance of the fact that some non-Aryan speeches exercised some influence upon Bengali, and misled by the description of our language as Sanskritic, many capable