| Dobhashi | |
|---|---|
| দোভাষী | دوبھاشي | |
| Region | Bengal,Arakan |
| Era | 14th-19th century |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
Dobhashi (Bengali:দোভাষী, دوبھاشي,romanized: Dōbhāṣī,lit. 'Bilingual') is aneologism used to refer to a historicalregister of theBengali language which borrowed extensively, in all aspects, fromArabic andPersian. It became the most customary form for composingputhi poetry predominantly using the traditionalBengali alphabet. However, Dobhashi literature was produced in the modifiedArabic scripts ofChittagong andNadia.[1] The standardisation of the modern Bengali language during thecolonial period, eventually led to its decline.[2][3]
No name has been recorded for this register during its development and practice. In the 19th century, anAnglican priest calledJames Long coined the termMusalmani Bengali,[4] which was also adopted by linguists such asSuniti Kumar Chatterji in the early 20th century.Sukumar Sen referred to it asMuslim Bengali. In 1921, theIslam Darshan monthly published an article on Bengali Muslim literature which referred to the register asIslami Bangla and considered its literature to be the "national literature" ofBengali Muslims. In 1968,Muhammad Abdul Hye andSyed Ali Ahsan published theirHistory of Bengali literature where they coined the nameDobhashi, meaning 'bilingual', which came to be the most popular name for the register.[3] Kazi Abdul Mannan was an advocate for the name Dobashi, as he opines that the register's usage was not limited to Muslims.[5]
Dobhashi Bengali was highly influenced by Arabic and Persian and in poetry, could grammatically change to adapt toPersian grammar without sounding odd to the reader. Arabic and Persian words in the register accounted for the majority of its vocabulary. As in most other foreign languages ofIslamic communities, the Arabicborrowings were borrowed through Persian, not through direct exposure of Bengali to Arabic, a fact that is evidenced by the typically Persianphonological mutation of the words of Arabic origin.[6] Dobhashi was also used for forms of story-telling likePuthi,Kissa,Jangnama,Raag,Jari,Hamd,Na`at andGhazal. Educated Bengalis would be multilingual and multi-literate enabling them to study and engage withPersian,Arabic andBengali literature.[7] Dobhashi manuscripts are paginated from right to left, imitating theArabic-tradition.
The following is a sample text in Dobhashi Bengali of Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations:
Dobhashi Bengali in theBengali script
Dobhashi Bengali in a modifiedArabic script[8][9][10][11]
دفا ١: تَمام اِنسان آزاد ھَئیا شَمان عِزّت ار حَقّ لئیا پَیدا ھَئي۔ تاهَدير ھوش و عَقل اچھے؛ تائي ايكجَن ارِك جَنير شاتھے بِرادَر حِسابے سُلوك كَرا ضَروري۔
Dobhashi Bengali inphonetic Romanization
Gloss
English Translation
The arrival of merchants, traders and missionaries fromArabia,Persia andTurkestan to the BuddhistPala Empire from as early as the 7th century led to Islamic influence in the modern-dayBengal region.[citation needed] AfterBakhtiyar Khalji's conquest in the 13th century, subsequent Muslim expeditions to Bengal encouraged the migration of Arabic andPersian-speaking Muslims, who settled among the native population and greatly influenced the local language.[12] Thus Bengali derived a large number of words from Persian and Arabic, which then seeped into its literature.[13] Bengali was practised and taught culturally among households, and was also promoted and supported by theMuslim dynasties who ruled over Bengal.[14] Under theSultanate of Bengal, Bengali was established as an official language, contrary to previous states which had exclusively favouredSanskrit,Pali and Persian.[15][16]
The 14th-century Bengali Islamic scholarNur Qutb Alam composed poetry in both Persian and Bengali using only thePersian alphabet.[17][18] The late 14th-centurySultan of Bengal,Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah,Turco-Persian in origin, was a patron of literature and poetry. His court poet,Shah Muhammad Saghir, was reportedly the first to useIslamic terminology such asAllah,Rasul andAlim in the native Bengali native script. His best known work isYusuf-Zulekha.[19] From as early as the 14th century, the use of Persian loanwords in Bengali literature became common, such as the works ofZainuddin,Syed Sultan,Bahram KhanAbdul Hakim andHeyat Mahmud. The influence also reached Bengali Hindu writers too, with medieval authors such asBipradas Pipilai and theChandimangal poets implementing a large quantity of loanwords, as well as the courts ofArakan through the likes ofAlaol andDaulat Qazi.[7]
Bharatchandra Ray, referred to the newly common language as "jabônī miśal", meaningYāvanī-mixed. He says:[20]
মানসিংহ পাতশায় হইল যে বাণী, উচিত যে আরবী পারসী হিন্দুস্থানী;
পড়িয়াছি সেই মত বৰ্ণিবারে পারি, কিন্তু সে সকল লোকে বুঝিবারে ভারি,
না রবে প্রসাদ গুণ না হবে রসাল, অতএব কহি ভাষা যাবনী মিশাল।
mansingh patshay hôilô je baṇī, uchit je arôbī, parsī, hindustanī
poriyachhi shei môtô bôrṇibare pari, kintu she shôkôl loke bujhibare bhari
na rôbe prôshad guṇ na hôbe rôshal, ôtôeb kôhi bhasha jabônī mishal
This translates to: "The appropriate language for conversation betweenMansingh andthe Emperor are Arabic, Persian andHindustani. I had studied these languages, and I could use them; but they are difficult for people to understand. They lack grace and juice (poetic quality). I have chosen, therefore, the Yāvanī-mixed (language)". The term "Yāvanī" literally referred to theGreeks, however was later repurposed to indicateMuslims.[21][22]
Dobhashi literature is not considered to merely be the use of Persian loanwords in Bengali literature, but rather represents a phenomenon which developed much later, in the 17th century. Shah Faqir Gharibullah ofHowrah is considered to be the pioneer of this new strand of Bengali literature, which actively utilised Perso-Arab vocabulary as opposed to only using established loanwords. He initiated the trend of Muslimputhis with the puthiAmir Hamza and his successors even transcribed his Bengali works using theArabic script.[23][24] Another notable example of the use of Arabic script is a late 19th-century Bengali theological work, which is now kept in theBangladesh National Museum.[25]
Medieval tales of Persian origin such asGul-e-Bakavali were being translated to Dobhashi and being popularised in Bengal. Dobhashi puthis about the latter tale were written by the likes of Munshi Ebadat Ali in 1840. Muhammad Fasih was also a renowned Dobhashi puthi writer who was known to have written a 30-quatrainchautisa (poetic genre using all letters of the alphabet) using Arabic letters, totalling 120 lines.[26]
The famous Bangladeshi academic,Wakil Ahmed, states thatJaiguner Puthi (Puthi of Jaigun), written by Syed Hamzah ofUdna, Hooghley in 1797, is "one of the finest examples" of puthis in Dobhashi. It took inspiration from earlierBengali Muslim works such asHanifar Digbijoy by Shah Barid Khan andHanifar Lorai by Muhammad Khan (1724). Muhammad Khater was a late Dobhashi writer who wrote a puthi about ill-fated lovers in 1864, taking inspiration from the 16th century Bengali poetDawlat Wazir Bahram Khan.[27]
| Islam in Bangladesh |
|---|
 |
Ideology/schools of thought |
TheEnglish Education Act 1835 banned the use of Persian and Arabic in education.Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, an employee of theEast India Company, worked towards standardising modern Bengali and considered the Perso-Arab loanwords as pollutants and dismissed them from his work. Dobhashi is considered to have lost popularity as a highly Sanskritised form ofShadhu-bhasha was institutionalised by the British, who worked alongside the educatedBrahmins that had chosen to accept English as the official language. In reaction to Sanskritisation, many Bengali Muslims that refused to learn English took to the initiative to continue Dobhashi literature hoping to maintain their identity and linguistic traditions. It was during this time that the register came to be known asMusalmani Bengali by theChristian Missionaries in Bengal, who had begun translatingthe Bible in order to reach the Bengali-speaking Muslim community. This was achieved byWilliam Goldsack who composed the first Mussalmani Bengali-English dictionary.[28] In the mid-nineteenth century, printing houses inCalcutta and across Bengal, were producing hundreds and hundreds of Musalmani Bengali literature. On the other hand, many Hindus such asRabindranath Tagore also opposed the highly Sanskritised variant and opted for a standard based on the colloquial dialect ofNadia.[29] In 1863,Nawab Abdul Latif founded theMohammedan Literary Society, which also rejected the idea of a single Standard Bengali and promoted the separation of Bengali based on religious background.[30][31]
Nowadays, traditional Dobhashi is mostly used for research purposes though it is sometimes used to achieve particular literary effects. Remnants of the register are present in regionalBengali dialects, in particular amongst rural Muslim communities in eastern Bengal. The 20th century educationist and researcher, Dr Kazi Abdul Mannan (d. 1994), wrote his thesis onThe Emergence and Development of Dobhasi Literature in Bengal (up to 1855 AD) for his PhD fromDhaka University in 1966.[citation needed]
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