Indian Parliament Should Call Back Its Resolution:

Archaic Richness of Orissa Shouldn’t be Spoiled;

Spelling Change Conspiracy Must be Foiled

-Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

When Oriyas were trying to resurrect their motherland, mischievously

divided by the British and distributed in four provinces that were claiming
linguistic superiority over their mother-tongue, in the first linguistic survey of
India, Sir George Greierson had no hesitation in saying - and showing on
reasons - that: “Oriya language can boast of a rich vocabulary in which
respect neither Bengali nor Hindi nor Telugu can vie with it”. He had
described the spread of this language in the following term: “The Oriya
language spoken in the four provinces covers an area of a little less than
Yugoslavia and is spoken by people numbering a little more than the
combined population of Norway and Sweden.” (Linguistic Survey of India,
Vol. I, 1, page 1466).

Sir John Beams, ICS who starting from Punjab had spent the maximum
period of his career in British Bengal from December 1861 till the end of his
service in 1893, had studied the land in depth in antiquarian and linguistic
areas. During that period, a pack of Bengali chauvinists, taking advantage
of their new evolution as elites bring eagerly obliging servants under the
arches of British administration, had started an obnoxious campaign to
obliterate Oriya as a language in schools and in offices. When Bengali
servants of the British were looting the landed properties of Oriyas by the
help of their masters, a shrewd pack of English knowing men of Bengal
were trying to supplement the loot by trying to convince the British officials
that Oriyas had no identity separate from Bengal as their language was a
mere dialect of Bengali. This had prompted Sir Beams to go deep into the
linguistic details of Bengal vis-a-vis Orissa and further to the languages of
the Provinces Orissa had been annexed to. On unprecedentedly in-depth
study of the concerned languages he exposed the falseness of the Bengali
claim. He established in his pioneering essay: “Comparative Grammar of
Four Languages” that Oriya had developed as a full-fledged language even
when Bengali as a language had not evolved. Subsequently incorporated in
his famous work: ʻThe Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan
Languages of Indiaʼ, his determination is as emphatic as conclusive. He
noted, “At a period when Oriya was already a fixed and settled language,
Bengali did not exist. The Bengalis spoke a vast variety of corrupt forms of
Eastern Hindi. It is not till quite recent times that we find anything that can
with propriety be called a Bengali language.”

Beamʼs finding had not only shut the mouths of the Bengali chauvinists like
R.L.Mitra who had been wrongfully and maliciously shouting that Oriya was
not a separate language but a branch of their own, but also, over and
above what Sir George Greierson - cited supra - had said in the Linguistic
Survey of India, prompted the famous Bengali linguist Dr. Suniti Chatterjee
to say that amongst the three linked linguistic sisters - Oriya, Bengali and
Assamese - Oriya was certainly the eldest. In Indian Historical Quarterly,
Vol.XXIII, at p.337, he said, “Of these three languages – Oriya, Bengali and
Assamese – Oriya has preserved a great many archaic features in both
grammar and pronunciation and it may be said without travesty of linguistic
truth that Oriya is the eldest of the three sisters, when we consider the
archaic character of the language”.

A major aspect of the archaic character of Oriya is the preserved distinction

in different pronunciations of seemingly similar letters such as and .
Of these two letters, the first one is the basic one when the second one is
its phonetic transformation. Usage of this letter in Oriya is so peculiar
that when it is used in the midst or at the end of a word, its pronunciation
becomes different from that when used at the beginning of the word.
Therefore, there is a dot underneath the second one. Keeping in mind the
necessity of retaining and reflecting the pronunciation in written expression,
when the first one is transliterated into English by the letter ʻDʼ , two English
letters such as ʻRʼ and ʻDʼ are used together for transliteration of the second
one having the dot underneath. This is why even the great G. C. Praharaj,
Kaiser-I-Hind, had used the spelling for in the title of his
matchless lexicon of Oriya language, Purnnachandra Oriya
Bhashakosha. As phonetic marks were not always advantageous for all
time for everybody to write the frequently used name of (Orissa)
or (Oriya), in place of ‘RD’ the letter ‘R’ was adopted in
representing the letter in the middle of the word.

The letters and were shown in transliteration as ‘S’ and ‘SS’

respectively to retain the phonetic aspect and .
The English letter ‘A’ was preferred for transliteration of the first two
vowels of Oriya - and - when the ‘A’ with phonetic mark
overhead such as was adopted to depict the second vowel. This was
not advantageous for frequent writing. Therefore, instead of phonetic ,
the English letter ‘Y’ was inserted before the normal letter ‘A’ to give
expression to . Thus the phonetic expression of evolved from
to Oriya in course of time for English writers.

As I have discussed in my earlier essay on 11 June 2008, the term Urisa /

Urdisya and Uriya / Urdiya etc etc applied respectively to and
in Hindi / Bengali tongues are derived from Orissa’s ancient names
like Udra Desha and Uddiyana. The ‘Y’ factor therein connotes to
(YA) which is a derivation of (CHHA) which is “added in the sense of
belonging to” (in this case belonging to Orissa) as per M.R.Kale’s
‘Higher Sanskrit Grammar’.

Hence all the spellings of and are perfectly correct and

connote to the unique archaic richness of Orissa. This is why, the Indian
Parliament should call back its resolution, fortunately as it has failed to
qualify to be sent to the President and the spelling change conspiracy
should be challenged and foiled by everybody to whom Orissa is the
beloved motherland and to whom archaic richness of a land is worthy of
preservation.