Assamese, also known by its endonyms Asamiya or Oxomiya ( ),Assamese is an anglicized term used for the language, but scholars have also used Asamiya (Moral 1992, Goswami & Tamuli 2003) or Asomiya as a close approximation of /ɔxɔmijɑ/, the word used by the speakers for their language. is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, where it is an official language. It has long served as a lingua franca in parts of Northeast India. It has over 15 million native speakers and 8.3 million second language speakers according to Ethnologue, although this claim is widely disputed by academics, based on census figures. Assamese was designated as a classical Indian language by the Government of India on 3 October 2024 on account of its antiquity and literary traditions.
Nefamese, an Assamese-based pidgin in Arunachal Pradesh, was used as a lingua franca before being replaced by Hindi; and Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language, continues to be widely used in Nagaland. The Kamtapuri language of Rangpur Division of Bangladesh and the Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri districts of India is linguistically closest to Assamese and they both are descended from the Kamarupi Prakrit. In the past, it was the court language of the Ahom kingdom from the 17th century.
After the differentiation of Maithili and Odia, Assamese was in its formative stages in the 12th century CEGoswami, U (1975), Grammatical sketches of Indian languages with comparative vocabulary and texts, Volume 1, P 31 from the middle Indo-Aryan Magadhi Prakrit. Its sister languages include Angika, Bengali, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Chakma, Chittagonian, Hajong, Rajbangsi, Surjapuri, Maithili, Rohingya and Sylheti. It has been written in the Assamese script till the 20th century, and the Bengali-Assamese script from the mid-19th century, which are abugida systems, from left to right, with many typographic ligatures.
History
Assamese originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, though the exact nature of its origin and growth is not clear yet."Asamiya has historically originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, but the exact nature of its origin and growth is not very clear as yet." It is generally believed that Assamese and the Kamatapuri lects derive from the Kamarupi Prakrit, an eastern variety of the Magadhi Prakrit"Dr. S. K. Chatterji basing his conclusions on the materials accumulated in LSI, Part I, and other monographs on the Bengali dialects, divides Eastern Mag. Pkt. and Ap. into four dialect groups. (1) Raddha dialects which comprehend Western Bengali which gives standard Bengali colloquial and Oriya in the South West. (2) Varendra dialects of North Central Bengal. (3) Kumarupa dialects which comprehend Assamese and the dialects of North Bengal. (4) Vanga dialects which comprehend the dialects of East Bengal (ODBL VolI p140)." There is evidence that the Prakrit of the Kamarupa kingdom differed enough from the Magadhi Prakrit to be identified as either a parallel Kamrupi Prakrit or at least an eastern variety of the Magadha Prakrit , though an admixture with the Sauraseni Prakrit is also hypothesised by one author.'One of the interesting theories propounded by Sri Medhi is the classification of Assamese "as a mixture of Eastern and Western groups" or a "mixture of Sauraseni and Magadhi". But whether it is word resemblance or grammatical resemblance, the author admits that in some cases they may be accidental. But he says, "In any case, they may be of some help to scholars for more searching enquiry in future".' The Indo-Aryan, which appeared in the 4th–5th century in Assam, was probably spoken in the new settlements of Kamarupa—in urban centres and along the Brahmaputra River—surrounded by Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic communities."(W)e should imagine a linguistic patchwork with an eastern Indo-Aryan vernacular (not yet really "Assamese") in the urban centers and along the river and Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic communities everywhere." Kakati's (1941) assertion that Assamese has an Austroasiatic substrate is generally assumed—which suggests that when the Indo-Aryan centres formed in the 4th–5th centuries CE, there were substantial Austroasiatic speakers that later accepted the Indo-Aryan vernacular."While Kakati's assertion of an Austroasiatic substrate needs to be re-established on the basis of more systematic evidence, it is consistent with the general assumption that the lower Brahmaputra drainage was originally Austroasiatic speaking. It also implies the existence of a substantial Austroasiatic speaking population till the time of spread of Aryan culture into Assam, i.e. it implies that up until the 4th-5th centuries CE and probably much later Tibeto-Burman languages had not completely supplanted Austroasiatic languages." Based on the 7th-century Chinese traveller Xuanzang's observations, suggests that the Indo-Aryan vernacular differentiated itself in Kamarupa before it did in Bengal,"It is curious to find that according to (Hiuen Tsang) the language of Kamarupa 'differed a little' from that of mid-India. Hiuen Tsang is silent about the language of Pundra-vardhana or Karna-Suvarna; it can be presumed that the language of these tracts was identical with that of Magadha." and that these differences could be attributed to non-Indo-Aryan speakers adopting the language."Perhaps this 'differing a little' of the Kamarupa speech refers to those modifications of Aryan sounds which now characterise Assamese as well as North- and East-Bengali dialects." "When [the Tibeto-Burman speakers] adopted that language they also enriched it with their vocabularies, expressions, affixes etc." The newly differentiated vernacular, from which Assamese eventually emerged, is evident in the Prakritisms present in the Sanskrit of the Kamarupa inscriptions."... (it shows) that in Ancient Assam there were three languages viz. (1) Sanskrit as the official language and the language of the learned few, (2) Non-Aryan tribal languages of the Austric and Tibeto-Burman families, and (3) a local variety of Prakrit (ie a MIA) wherefrom, in course of time, the modern Assamese language as a MIL, emerged."
Magadhan and Gauda-Kamarupa stages The earliest forms of Assamese in literature are found in the 9th-century Buddhist verses called Charyapada"The earliest specimen of Assamese language and literature is available in the dohās, known also as Caryās, written by the Buddhist Siddhacharyas hailing from different parts of eastern India. Some of them are identified as belonging to ancient Kāmarūpa by the Sino-Tibetologists." the language of which bear some affinities with Assamese (as well as Bengali, Maithili and Odia) and which belongs to a period when the Prakrit was at the cusp of differentiating into regional languages."The language of [charyapadas] was also claimed to be early Assamese and early Bihari (Eastern Hindi) by various scholars. Although no systematic scientific study has been undertaken on the basis of comparative reconstruction, a cursory look is enough to suggest that the language of these texts represents a stage when the North-Eastern Prakrit was either not differentiated or at an early stage of differentiation into the regional languages of North-Eastern India." The spirit and expressiveness of the Charyadas are today found in the folk songs called Deh-Bicarar Git."The folk-song like Deh Bicarar Git and some aphorisms are found to contain sometimes the spirit and way of expression of the charyapadas."
In the 12th-14th century Bengal works of Ramai Pandit (Sunya Puran), Chandidas (Krishna Kirtan), Sukur Mamud (Gopichandrar Gan), Durlabha Mallik (Gobindachandrar Git) and Bhavani Das (Mainamatir Gan)""There are some works of the period between 12th and 14th centuries, which kept the literary tradition flowing after the period of the charyapadas. They are Sunya Puran of Ramai Pandit, Krishna Kirtan of Boru Chandidas, Gopichandrar Gan of Sukur Mamud. Along with these three works Gobindachandrar Git of Durlabha Mallik and Mainamatirgan of Bhavani Das also deserve mention here." Assamese grammatical peculiarities coexist with features from Bengali language."No doubt some expression close to the Bengali language can be found in these works. But grammatical peculiarities prove these works to be in the Assamese language of the western part of Assam." "In Krishna Kirtana for instance, the first personal affixes of the present indicative are -i and -o; the former is found in Bengali at present and the later in Assamese. Similarly the negative particle na- assimilated to the initial vowel of the conjugated root which is characteristic of Assamese is also found in Krishna Kirtana. Modern Bengali places the negative particle after the conjugated root." Though the Gauda-Kamarupa stage is generally accepted and partially supported by recent linguistic research, it has not been fully reconstructed."In summary, none of Pattanayak's changes are diagnostic of a unique proto Bangla-Asamiya subgroup that also includes proto Kamta.... Grierson's contention may well be true that 'Gauḍa Apabhraṁśa' was the parent speech both of Kamrupa and today's Bengal (see quote under §7.3.2), but it has not yet been proven as such by careful historical linguistic reconstruction." and "Though it has not been the purpose of this study to reconstruct higher level proto-languages beyond proto-Kamta, the reconstruction here has turned up three morphological innovations—[MI 73.] (diagnostic), [MI 2] (supportive), [MI 70] (supportive)—which provide some evidence for a proto-language which may be termed proto Gauḍa-Kamrupa."
Early Assamese
A distinctly Assamese literary form appeared first in the 14th century in the courts of the Kamata kingdom when Hema Sarasvati composed the poem Prahlāda Carita."However, the earliest literary work available which may be claimed as distinctly Asamiya is the Prahrāda Carita written by a court poet named Hema Sarasvatī in the latter half of the thirteenth century AD. In the 14th-century, Madhava Kandali translated the Ramayana into Assamese (Saptakanda Ramayana) in the court of Mahamanikya, a Kachari king from central Assam. Though the Assamese idiom in these works is fully individualised, some archaic forms and conjunctive particles too are found. This period corresponds to the common stage of proto-Kamta and early Assamese."The phonological and morphological reconstruction of the present study has found three morphological innovations that give some answers to these questions: [MI 67.] (diagnostic), [MI 22.] (supportive), and [MI 23.] (supportive). These changes provide evidence for a proto Kamrupa stage of linguistic history—ancestral to proto-Kamta and proto eastern-Kamrupa (Asamiya). However, a thorough KRDS-andAsamiya-wide reconstruction of linguistic history is required before this protostage can be robustly established."