Origin of Assamese Language

Assamese is a Magadhan speech coming from the regions of Videha-Magadha, it entered Kamrupa or western Assam, where the speech was first described as Assamese. Sir G. A. Grierson felt that Maghadhi was the common source of all the eastern dialects. according to him, it developed into Northern Bengali and Assamese in the North East, into Oriya in the south and into Bengali in the area between the two. The standard Assamese and especially its dialects preserve a good number of important phonological and morphological points of agreement among the Magadhan languages. The earliest reference to the Assamese language is found in the remarks of the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-Tsang (7th Century). The copper plate inscriptions of Kamrupa (from between 6/7th and 12th centuries) record the Kamrupa Prakrit and date the antiquity of the Assamese language to a very remote period of History.

It is worthwhile to note that although the Brahmaputra valley from Sadiya to Dhubri and its surroundings is the area where Assamese language flourishes, originally it was also used by the Kachari kings of Cachar who with their people migrated from the Brahmaputra valley. It has a long history of its growth and development as a distinct language of North Eastern India. It is one of the languages recognized by the Constitution. Assamese language has been enriched by loan vocabulary from the innumerable tribal dialects spoken by the tribal folks in and around the Brahmaputra valley. The TAI settlers who established the Ahom kingdom in Assam, assimilated themselves with the local society and people whose language they adopted and Assamese become the language of the Ahom court. Royal patronage and zeal of the religious reformers encouraged and developed written Assamese literature which has a hoary past as compared to the other North eastern languages till the advent of the British, all the migrants to Assam assimilated themselves with the local language and culture of Assam. The language spoken in Jalpaiguri, Koch Bihar and Rangpur was called Northern Bengali by Grierson and had been classified into Bahe and Rajbongshi dialects.These areas once formed a part of ancient Kamrupa or Kamata and these two dialects have more affinity with Assamese and the the dialects of Goalpara, Kamrup amnd Mangaldoi Sub - division than with the Northern and Eastern Bengali dialects of Hoogly and Dacca.

"Folio from Gita Govinda - Assamese rendering of Jayadeva's Sanskrit poem by Kaviraja Chakravarty (c-1696-1714 AD)"