A digital historical dictionary that documents the evolution of the Bengali language aims to go live on February 21, Bhasha Diwas, 2028.
The team behind Shabdakalpa, anchored at the School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR) in Jadavpur University, believes that it would be the first historical dictionary for a non-Latin script, tracing the journey of Bengali words across centuries, capturing the language’s literary and archival heritage.
“We target to complete the project by February 2028, which coincidentally will also be the centenary of the Oxford English Dictionary that used to come in multiple volumes but now, of course, is available online. In fact, no other language has completed to date the full historical dictionary — even though work is going on in French, German and Dutch languages,” Sukanta Chaudhuri, project director of Shabdakalpa, said.
A historical dictionary analyses a comprehensive database of words in a language to find when each word was first used, and all subsequent changes in form, meaning and usage. It is the most basic tool for studying all uses and applications of the language.
The work began in 2017-18. The project is in an advanced stage and has been made possible by the effort of a dedicated team of 10 researchers led by Chaudhuri, professor emeritus of English and founding director of SCTR, and Subha Chakrabarti Dasgupta, joint director of Shabdakalpa and a retired professor of comparative literature at JU.
It also reaped the benefit of being housed in an interdisciplinary school. The project is receiving valuable inputs from many departments, notably Bengali, computer science and the School of Languages.
While the initial financial assistance came from the university and then the state government, the Global Jadavpur University Alumni Foundation and many other well-wishers came forward later. Ranjit Chakravarti, president of the foundation, described Shabdakalpa as a “milestone for the present generation and posterity”.
The latest to support the initiative is the Biseswar Chattopadhyay Trust, which has agreed to provide an appreciable part of the funding till the target completion date.
Dipankar Chatterjee, who established the trust in memory of his grandfather, said: “We are honoured to support Shabdakalpa, a project of profound academic and cultural significance. It resonates deeply with our mission to preserve Bengal’s rich linguistic heritage.”
Chaudhuri lauded the “generous and timely” support of the trust and appreciated the involvement of the trustees, Rudra Chatterjee and Mitakshara Kumari, who recently visited the Shabdakalpa lab, engaging with the research team and witnessing the project’s progress.
This is the third university grant from the trust, Rudra Chatterjee said. The first was to Presidency University for a pre-Independence history chair, and the second a donation to Columbia University for the Bengali library under Gayatri Chakravarti Spivak.
Recalling the initial days of the Shabdakalpa project, Chaudhuri noted how being “born digital” had its advantage even as work on the Bengali historical dictionary started later than others.
And being digital will have its advantages when the project is completed in 2028.
“Once the main project is completed, there will be a need to constantly update it, fill in the gaps, and match the dynamism of the language itself. And there will be gaps. OUP is still getting feedback from scholars and working on its online English dictionary. A permanent cell is absolutely imperative,” Chaudhuri said.
He felt there was a lack of attention to the preservation and continuity of a project. Drawing attention to Bichitra, the online Tagore variorum — the biggest integrated online database on any writer anywhere on earth — Chaudhuri batted for putting up a mirror site on the ‘cloud’, and noted that the same had to be done for Shabdakalpa as well. As of now, the database is on the JU server.
Additional reporting by
Subhankar Chowdhury