Sundarbans · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
Sundarbans Bengali is settler speech. The islands were cleared and embanked largely from the nineteenth century onward by labour drawn from the eastern delta districts and from the Chota Nagpur plateau, and the resulting variety is eastern Bengali with a heavy working vocabulary that the standard has no words for — for the state of a tide, the age of a creek, the grade of a honey, the direction a tiger came from. Adivasi languages arrived with the clearing labour and survive in pockets. The single most striking feature is lexical taboo: in the forest, a set of ordinary words is replaced by others, because saying the plain word is held to bring the thing.
Speech varieties
Eastern Bengali in its verb endings and vowels, drawn from Khulna, Jessore, Barisal and Faridpur speech, with a dense occupational vocabulary of tide, net, creek and forest.
Speakers: The everyday speech of the islands
The school, radio and market register, based on the Nadia–Kolkata variety of the western delta. The gap between it and island speech is wide enough that children meet a partly unfamiliar language on their first school day.
Spoken by descendants of labour brought from the plateau for embankment and clearing work in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in scattered settlements in the polder belt.
The Perso-Arabic-vocabulary register of the puthi literature, which is also the register the Bonbibi Johuranama is written in — and which Hindu villagers reciting it therefore use without comment.
Indigenous terminology
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bhati ভাটি | The ebb, and the downstream country. Athhero bhatir desh — the country of eighteen tides — is the region's own name for itself in the Bonbibi text. |
| Jowar and bhata জোয়ার / ভাটা | Flood tide and ebb tide. Every plan on an island is stated in these terms rather than in clock time, because a creek is a road at one and a mudbank at the other. |
| Mouli মৌলি | A honey collector, working in a licensed party in a short spring season. Also mawali. The word names an occupation, a season and a specific set of risks. |
| Bawali বাওয়ালি | A woodcutter and golpata cutter working the forest under permit, in a separate season from the mouli. |
| Meen dhora মীন ধরা | Prawn-seed collection — dragging a fine net through the shallows for tiger-prawn fry to sell to the farms. Done overwhelmingly by women and children, standing in salt water for hours. |
| Gunin and bauley গুনিন / বাউলে | The ritual specialist who leads a party into the forest, recites the Bonbibi formulae, marks the boundary of where the party may go, and is held responsible if someone is taken. Every working party has one. |
| Bonbibir than বনবিবির থান | A forest shrine — usually a small hut or a raised mud platform with clay images, at a jetty, a village edge or a forest entry point. There is no priestly caste attached; a villager officiates. |
| Badh বাঁধ | The earth embankment ringing an island. It is the single most important structure in the region and is often maintained by the households whose land it protects. |
| Nona নোনা | Salt or brackish. Nona jol is salt water, nona mati is salinised soil, and nona lagcche means a field has taken salt and will not crop properly. |
| Bhutbhuti ভুটভুটি | A small wooden boat with a single-cylinder irrigation pump engine bolted into it, named for the sound. The region's standard vehicle. |
| Boro miyan and mama বড় মিয়াঁ / মামা | "The big gentleman" and "maternal uncle" — two of the substitute names used for the tiger inside the forest. The animal's plain name is avoided there, on the principle that naming it calls it. |
| Char চর | A silt island thrown up by the tide, cultivable, unregistered and impermanent. |
Sayings
| Saying | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Athhero bhatir desh | The country of eighteen tides | The Bonbibi text's name for the Sundarbans, and the name islanders use of themselves. It defines the place by the movement of water rather than by any boundary. |
| Bone gele fera nishchoy noy | Going into the forest does not guarantee coming back | Said flatly, as a statement of working conditions rather than as a warning. It is the reason no forest party leaves without visiting the shrine. |
| Ma Bonbibi rokkha koro | Mother Bonbibi, protect us | The formula recited at the shrine before entry, by Hindu and Muslim members of the same party, in the same words. |
| Jaar badh, taar jomi | Whose embankment, his land | Land here is only land while the wall holds. A statement about maintenance obligations as much as about ownership. |
| Nona lagle tin bochor | Once salt gets in, three years | A field that has taken salt water will not crop properly for several seasons. The number varies with who is saying it; the principle does not. |
Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Sundarbans. (17)