Dark Age of the Assamese language Dark Age of the Assamese language The Dark Age of Assamese Language is the time-frame during which Bengali Language eclipsed the Assamese. This time-frame is about 37 years long, from 1836 until 1873. During British India, the Bengali Language was imposed over Assamese as the British took over Assam. The clerical and technical workers that they brought were Bengali, imposing Bengali as the medium of instruction in schools and colleges and for all official purposes. Nathan Brown, an American Baptist missionary to India, worked for the restoration of the Assamese language to avoid it being overtaken by the Bengali language
Assamese language The earliest forms of Assamese in literature are found in the ninth-century Buddhist verses called Charyapada, and in 12-14th century works of Ramai Pundit ("Sunya Puran"), Boru Chandidas ("Krishna Kirtan"), Sukur Mamud ("Gopichandrar Gan"), Durllava Mullik ("Gobindachandrar Git") and Bhavani Das ("Mainamatir Gan"). In these works, Assamese features coexist with features from other Modern Indian Languages. A fully distinguished literary form (poetry) appeared first in the fourteenth century—in the courts of the Kamata kingdom and in the courts of an eastern Kachari king where Madhav Kandali translated the Ramayana into the Assamese (Saptakanda Ramayana). From the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,