Dr. Byomkes Chakrabarti (also spelled Byomkesh Chakraborty or Byomkesh Chakrabarty) (1923–1981) was a Bengali

Bengali language

Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...

 research worker on ethnic languages. He was also a renowned educationist and a poet. His major contribution to linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 was in finding out some basic relationship between Santali

Santali language

Santhali is a language in the Santhali subfamily of Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken by about six million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan . Most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal. It has...

 and the Bengali language. He showed how the Bengali language has got some unique characteristics, which are absent in other Indian languages, under the influence of Santali. His contribution was fundamental in nature in the origin and development of the Bengali language and provided scopes of research in newer horizons in liguistics.

Life

Byomkes Chakrabarti, son of Sarat Chandra Chakrabarti and Sitala Sundari Chakrabarti, was born in Kharar-Gopinathpur village in the Paschim Medinipur

Paschim Medinipur

Paschim Medinipur district or West Midnapore district is the districts of the state of West Bengal, India. It was formed on January 1, 2002 after the Partition of Midnapore into Paschim Medinipur and Purba Medinipur. The district has 4 sub-divisions: Kharagpur, Medinipur Sadar, Ghatal and Jhargram...

 district of West Bengal

West Bengal

West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth-most populous. It is also the seventh-most populous sub-national entity in the world, with over 91 million inhabitants. A major agricultural producer, West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's GDP...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, in the year 1923. He took his M.A.

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 degrees in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and Bengali from Calcutta University. He was the first Ph.D. on the Santali language from this University. Dr. Chakrabarti came in close contact with Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterji

Suniti Kumar Chatterji

Suniti Kumar Chatterji was an Indian linguist, educationist and litterateur. He was born on 26 November 1890 at Shibpur in Howrah...

 and Dr. Sukumar Sen as their student and imbibed aptitude for linguistic studies from these teachers in the field. His acquaintance with the tribal bases of the Midnapur district induced him to study their culture. He concentrated on the Santali culture

Santals

The Santhal , are the largest tribal community in India, who live mainly in the states of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Assam. There is also a significant Santal minority in neighboring Bangladesh, and a small population in Nepal....

 in particular and acquired sound knowledge of Santali language. He carried on systematic research on the comparative study

Comparative linguistics

Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....

 of Santali and Bengali languages.
Dr. Chakrabarti started his career as a Head Master and subsequently held the position of the Principal in Raja Birendra Chandra College in Kandi

Kandi

Kandi is a town, arrondissement and commune in the Alibori Department of eastern Benin. Originally a market town, Kandi is now primarily a farming centre. It lies on the nation's main north-south highway, 650 km from Cotonou and 325 miles north of Porto-Novo. The town is the capital of...

, Murshidabad district

Murshidabad district

Murshidabad district is a district of West Bengal in eastern India. Situated on the left bank of the river Ganges, the district is very fertile. Covering an area of 5,341 km² and having a population 5.863m it is a densely populated district and the ninth most populous in India...

 of West Bengal. Death put an end to his career in the year 1981.

Research work

His work covers all the aspects of Phonetics

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

 and Phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

, morphology

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

, Syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

, Semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

 and general characteristics of the languages in literature and vocabulary.
Santali, belonging to the Austro-Asiatic family

Austro-Asiatic languages

The Austro-Asiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. The name Austro-Asiatic comes from the Latin words for "south" and "Asia", hence "South Asia"...

 and having a tradition traceable from pre-Aryan days retained its distinct identity and co-existed with Bengali, a language belonging to the Indo-Aryan family

Indo-Aryan languages

The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...

, within the boundary of Bengal. This affiliation is generally accepted, but there are many cross-questions and puzzles. In modern Indian languages like Western Hindi the steps of evolution from Midland Prakrit Sauraseni

Sauraseni

A Dramatic Prakrit, Shauraseni was the chief language used in drama in northern medieval India. Most of the material in this language originates from the 3rd to 10th centuries AD, though it was probably a spoken colloquial around the 5th century BC...

could be traced clearly. But in case of Bengali such steps of evolution are not aways clear and distinct. One has to look at other influences that moulded the essential characteristics of Bengali. Dr. Byomkes Chakrabarti investigated the complex process of assimilation of non-Aryan elements, particularly the Santali elements, by Bengali. On the other hand he showed the overwhelming influence of Bengali on Santali. His formulations are based on the detailed study of reciprocal influences on all aspects of both the languages and tries to bring out the unique features of both the languages.