Dutt, Romesh Chunder: The literature of Bengal: being an attempt to trace the progress of the national mind in its various aspects, as reflected in the nation’s literature from the earliest times to the present day ; with copious extracts from the best writers (Calcutta, 1877)

38 LITERATURE OF BENGAL.

^ The affinity of languages is known, not so much by-
substantives and adjectives, which change forms constant-
ly, but by verbs and particles, and the subjoined list
shews how closely the Prakrita verbs resemble tht?
Bengali. One would feel some hesitation, probably, to
trace such Bengali words as ^ and
from such Sankrit words as ?rf%r c?sT?r1% and

^Fs;t% but that the corresponding Prakrita wsrds c*t^
CTNt^ and "sfflfw step in and,, at once point out

the connexion. Close as the resemblance between the

<

Prakrita and Bengali verbs now appears, it was still
closer at the time of Vidyapati and Chandidas.

When was the Bengali language derived from the
Prakrita 1 This questiori does not admit of any definite
answer. Such transformation is always slow, and is
wrought out in centuries. "We have elsewhere remarked
that the earlieiy- poets and writers of Bengal disdained
to write in the spoken or vulgar tongue, and chose rather
to imitate the great Sanskrit authors of old in their own
feeble Sanskrit. No early "work therefore in Bengali has
come down to us, and we are therefore at a loss to con-
jecture as to when the Prakrita language was transformed
into the Bengali. It may probably be assumed that the
introduction of the Bengali alphabet was contemporane-
ous with the formation of the Bengali language, and we

<fs>.

"It?