(Original writing published in todays Assam Tribune, Page 6) UNICODE AND ASSAMESE SCRIPT DEBACLE – Aziz-ul Haque Unicode is a computing industry standard for consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems. Its consortium founded in 1991in California, develops and maintains a wide spectrum of globalization standards and data repositories that are deployed as the foundation for internationalization and localization of software on every platform around the world. In a multilingual office or business setting, Unicode’s importance as a universal character set cannot be overlooked. It represents a single encoding scheme for all languages and characters. Languages which do not have their own scripts use others for writing. Roman script is used in writing more than a hundred languages of the world and Devanagri for several Indian languages. Unfortunately, Assamese in spite of having distinct script which has developed since the one and half millennium is said to have using the Bengali script. It states that the Bengali script is used in writing Bengali, Assamese and a number of minority languages. Thus it has made Assamese a sub-language of Bengali reminding us the years from 1836 to 1872, as the British rulers imposed Bengali in Assam. The justification of this imposition was that Assamese was considered to be a patois, colloquial dialect or upabhasa of Bengali. Sadly, Assamese people by and large remained unconcerned about this injustice. It seems providential that the American Baptist missionaries came to Assam to restore its language from extinction. Among them, Nathan Brown pioneered in proving the beauty and distinctiveness of Assamese language. Miles Bronson spearheaded the struggle to reinstate Assamese language and finally it was won in 1873. Thus, it took about 37 years to convince the British administration that Assamese was a distinct language. We need a different struggle in this computer-internet age for getting a separate range for Assamese writing system in Unicode. The origin of the idea of Assamese script can be traced back to as early as 300 BC, found in stone inscriptions during the reign of Ashoka the Great. This is known as Brahmi. In Assam, it developed through the ages and it has come to be known as Kamrupi. The earliest relics of Assamese can be found in paleographic records of the Kamrup Kingdom beginning from the 5th century. This is authenticated by inscriptions found on stones, copper plates, coins, temples and writings on the bark of sanchi tree. There are documentary evidences to show that Kamrupi script was written in the 7th century or even before. The report of Chinese pilgrim Hsüan-tsang who visited Kamrup also stands as historical evidence. The Charyapadas, the Buddhist songs composed in 8th-12th centuries are considered as early Assamese writing where Assamese letters ‘ra’ and ‘wa’ are noticeable. The ancient name of Assam was Kamrup, and for a considerable period its territory was extended to the River Kosi in Mithila area of Bihar, Orissa and Bengal. There had been great kings like Kumar Bhaskar Barman who could extend their territories and greatly influenced their subjects. Moreover, Kamrup had cordial relations with the neighbouring kingdoms including Tibet. The people of those areas came under sociocultural influence of Kamrup. Either they used Kamrupi or borrowed the idea from this script. That is why there is close affinity of Assamese with Bengali, Maithili and Oriya (phonetically) and Tibetan. It is also to be observed that Assamese script has more resemblance including its basic triangular shape with Tibetan than Devanagari script which developed in the eight century. Kamrupi has nothing to do with Nagari form of writing except a common source of borrowing the concept from Brahmi. Moreover, Kamrupi is three hundred years older than Nagari script. Therefore, the move by a section of intellectuals for renaming the Assamese writing system as Eastern or Pub-nagari is not only irrelevant but also erroneous. Moreover, invention of the term by another section of people to rename as Eastern or Purbi must be discarded on the similar ground. The Assamese language has its own and separate stream of origin that has evolved in a different way from the rest of the Indo-Aryan languages of India. It is not entirely a Sanskrit originated language; rather, it was influenced later by Sanskrit due to migration of people from North India in various ages and from the spread of Hinduism. The form used by Bengali is phonetically lacking because it does not have any alphabet to represent the sound ‘wa’. For the sound ‘ra’, the script is same as Assamese, the only difference is a dot under the letter instead of middle diagonal. It is because the Bengali was using the same script as the Assamese till the coming of the British. Certain changes were made in Bengali script during the British rule. Apart from phonetic differences, all conjunct letters and symbols of Assamese are not same with Bengali. The entity of several characters in Assamese are different, even the forms look alike. Therefore, problem will arise in transliteration if they are kept together. There is concrete example of duplication and triplication of characters in Unicode. The three major European writing systems viz Latin, Greek and Cyrillic have been allowed duplicate and triplicate characters for these scripts. Then why cannot have for Assamese and Bengali? Thus to provide a separate slot for Assamese will settle the burning issue without affecting the other. It must be mentioned that the Government of India does the same as Unicode. According to the government, India has 22 recognized languages and 11 scripts. Assamese is recognized as a language but it is not included as one of the 11 scripts. It says Assamese is written using the Bengali script. Indian encoding system is known as Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) which has been accepted by Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL). So what is happening in the ISCII is also reflected in the Unicode. TDIL is a division of Information Technology (DIT), Govt of India. This division is a voting member of Unicode Consortium based in California. TDIL supplies information and data to the consortium. Therefore, more than Unicode, our government is responsible for the condition of Assamese writing system. A few people have appealed to the Unicode and the Govt of India raising this concern. There had been a government initiated meeting in New Delhi with Assamese and Bengali scholars but no headway till the date. It seems that the Government of Assam, Asom Sahitya Sabha and the Assamese linguists are less concerned about the issue. Therefore, we need to voice against injustice done to Assamese writing system and fight for its rightful place. At the same time, the Indian Government must recognize Assamese as a distinct language with its own script.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 11:08:53 +0000
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