The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 6/Writings: Prose and Poems(Original and Translated)/The Bengali Language
THE BENGALI LANGUAGE
(Written for the "Udbodhan")
In our country, owing to all learning being in Sanskrit from the ancient
times, there has arisen an immeasurable gulf between the learned and the
common folk. All the great personages, from Buddha down to Chaitanya and
Ramakrishna, who came for the well-being of the world, taught the common
people in the language of the people themselves. Of course, scholarship is
an excellent thing; but cannot scholarship be displayed through any other
medium than a language that is stiff and unintelligible, that is unnatural
and merely artificial? Is there no room for art in the spoken language? What
is the use of creating an unnatural language to the exclusion of the natural
one? Do you not think out your scholastic researches in the language which
you are accustomed to speak at home? Why then do you introduce such a queer
and unwieldy thing when you proceed to put them in black and white? The
language in which you think out philosophy and science in your mind, and
argue with others in public — is not that the language for writing
philosophy and science? If it is not, how then do you reason out those
truths within yourselves and in company of others in that very language? The
language in which we naturally express ourselves, in which we communicate
our anger, grief, or love, etc.— there cannot be a fitter language than
that. We must stick to that idea, that manner of expression, that diction
and all. No artificial language can ever have that force, and that brevity
and expressiveness, or admit of being given any turn you please, as that
spoken language. Language must be made like pure steel — turn and twist it
any way you like, it is again the same — it cleaves a rock in twain at one
stroke, without its edge being turned. Our language is becoming artificial
by imitating the slow and pompous movement — and only that — of Sanskrit.
And language is the chief means and index of a nation's progress.
If you say, "It is all right, but there are various kinds of dialects in
different parts of Bengal — which of them to accept?" — the answer is: We
must accept that which is gaining strength and spreading through natural
laws, that is to say, the language of Calcutta. East or west, from
wheresoever people may come, once they breathe in the air of Calcutta, they
are found to speak the language in vogue there; so nature herself points out
which language to write in. The more railroads and facilities of
communication there are, the more will the difference of east and west
disappear, and from Chittagong to Baidyanath there will be that one
language, viz that of Calcutta. It is not the question which district
possesses a language most approaching Sanskrit — you must see which language
is triumphing. When it is evident that the language of Calcutta will soon
become the language of the whole of Bengal, then, if one has to make the
written and spoken language the same, one would, if one is intelligent
enough certainly make the language of Calcutta one's foundation. Here local
jealousies also should be thrown overboard. Where the welfare of the whole
province is concerned, you must overlook the claims to superiority of your
own district or village.
Language is the vehicle of ideas. It is the ideas that are of prime importance, language comes after. Does it look well to place a monkey on a horse that has trappings of diamonds and pearls? Just look at Sanskrit. Look at the Sanskrit of the Brâhmanas, at Shabara Swâmi's commentary on the Mimâmsâ philosophy, the Mahâbhâshya of Patanjali, and, finally, at the great Commentary of Achârya Shankara: and look also at the Sanskrit of comparatively recent times. You will at once understand that so long as a man is alive, he talks a living language, but when he is dead, he speaks a dead language. The nearer death approaches, the more does the power of original thinking wane, the more is there the attempt to bury one or two rotten ideas under a heap of flowers and scents. Great God! What a parade they make! After ten pages of big adjectives, all on a sudden you have — "There lived the King!" Oh, what an array of spun-out adjectives, and giant compounds, and skilful puns! They are symptoms of death. When the country began to decay, then all these signs became manifest. It was not merely in language — all the arts began to manifest them. A building now neither expressed any idea nor followed any style; the columns were turned and turned till they had all their strength taken out of them. The ornaments pierced the nose and the neck and converted the wearer into a veritable ogress; but oh, the profusion of leaves and foliage carved fantastically in them! Again, in music, nobody, not even the sage Bharata, the originator of dramatic performances, could understand whether it was singing, or weeping, or wrangling, and what meaning or purpose it sought to convey! And what an abundance of intricacies in that music! What labyrinths of flourishes — enough to strain all one's nerves! Over and above that, that music had its birth in the nasal tone uttered through the teeth compressed, in imitation of the Mohammedan musical experts! Nowadays there is an indication of correcting these; now will people gradually understand that a language, or art, or music that expresses no meaning and is lifeless is of no good. Now they will understand that the more strength is infused into the national life, the more will language art, and music, etc. become spontaneously instinct with ideas and life. The volume of meaning that a couple of words of everyday use will convey, you may search in vain in two thousand set epithets. Then every image of the Deity will inspire devotion, every girl decked in ornaments will appear to be a goddess, and every house and room and furniture will be animated with the vibration of life.