User:Chaipau/sandbox/assamese language

Assamese originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, though the exact nature of its origin and growth in not clear yet. It is generally believed that Assamese and the Kamatapuri lects derive directly from the Kamarupa dialect of Eastern Magadhi Prakrit though some authors contest a close connection with Magadhi Prakrit. The practice of Kamarupa kings on settling Indo-Aryan speakers in a region predominated by Mon-Khmer and Tibeto-Burmese speakers gave rise to many centers of sanskritization and detribalization. The Indo-Aryan language in Kamarupa had differentiated by the 7th-century, before it did in Bengal or Orissa. These changes were likely due to non-Indo-Aryan speakers adopting the language. The evidence of this language (Kamarupi Prakrit) is found in the Prakritisms of the Kamarupa inscriptions. The earliest forms of Assamese in literature are found in the ninth-century Buddhist verses called Charyapada (চৰ্যাপদ ), and in 12-14th century works of Ramai Pundit (Sunya Puran), Boru Chandidas (Krishna Kirtan), Sukur Mamud (Gopichandrar Gan), Durllava Mullik (Gobindachandrar Git) and Bhavani Das (Mainamatir Gan). In these works, Assamese features coexist with features from other Modern Indian Languages.

A fully distinguished literary form (poetry) appeared first in the fourteenth century&mdash;in the courts of the Kamata kingdom and in the courts of an eastern Kachari king where Madhav Kandali translated the Ramayana into the Assamese (Saptakanda Ramayana). From the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, songs – Borgeets, dramas – Ankiya Naat and the first prose writings (by Bhattadeva) were composed. The literary language, based on the western dialects of Assam moved to the court of the Ahom kingdom in the seventeenth century, where it became the state language. This period saw the widespread development of standardized prose infused with colloquial forms in Buranjis.

According to, this included "the colloquial prose of religious biographies, the archaic prose of magical charms, the conventional prose of utilitarian literature on medicine, astrology, arithmetic, dance and music, and above all the standardized prose of the Buranjis. The literary language, having become infused with the eastern idiom, became the standard literary form in the nineteenth century, when the British adopted it for state purposes. As the political and commercial center shifted to Guwahati after the mid-twentieth century, the literary form moved away from the eastern variety to take its current form.