Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Aspects of Bengali History and Society.

1978; University of British Columbia; Volume: 51; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2757036

1715-3379

Joseph T. O’Connell, Rachel Van M. Baumer,

South Asian Studies and Conflicts

the Muslim community in the social and intellectual ferment of the century.This dearth of Western scholarship concerned with the Bengali Muslims is a subject to which I shall return.J. H. Broomfield and John R. McLane both concern themselves with aspects of the independence movement in the twentieth century and the phenomenon of communal politics.Nicolaas Luykx traces the evolvement of public policy on rural development in East Bengal, including the role played by American agencies in development projects.The bibliographic essay by David Kopf is devoted entirely to publications by Bengal specialists in American universities.Sufficient time was not available to cover the vast literature on Bengal produced by scholars of many countries.In addition it seemed appropriate to this volume to discuss the work of American specialists, most of whom had been trained on United States government grants intended to provide the nation with resources of specialized knowledge of the various areas of the world, including Bengal.Bringing together the work of nine authors in a single volume results in a certain amount of variety, most obviouslY.,instyle.Scarcely less obvious in this volume are differences of spelling and use of diacritics in foreign words and names.Several years ago the Bengal Studies Group made a serious effort to standardize a system of transliteration for Bengali words; nevertheless, wide variations still exist in the methods of Bengal specialists.The problem with proper names is even greater.Some writers use a transliteration of the name as spelled in Bengali; others use anglicized spellings, many of which were used by the owners of the names themselves when writing in English.Given the extent of variation in these essays, it seemed best to let each author keep his own system rather than inflict the radical changes that would be necessary in some essays in order to employ a uniform method throughout the volume.The result of this decision is that a single name may appear in several versions if it appears in more than one contribution.Finally, these essays, while dealing exclusively with Bengal,undoubtedly contain much that is of interest to other South Asianists and quite possibly will furnish materials for area specialists of other regions who are interested in comparative studies.Still it must be pointed out that a collection of essays is often less than what its planners would have hoped to present.Although this volume was never intended to be an introductory or comprehensive work on Bengal, it was expected to be more representative of the studies done in the various periods of Bengal's history.Unfortunately, three excellent essays, on society in ancient India, anthropology, and art history, were not submitted for publication.Larger problems have also provided obstacles to the fulfillment of our objectives.The singular lack of