ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an account of the 'grammar debate' that took place in 1901 - 1902 - a debate recognized in Bengal as the first step enabling the emergence of a modern, popular register in written Bangla. Haraprasad Shastri's 1901 paper Baanggaalaa Byaakaran, 'Bangla grammar', initiated a debate about how the newly established literary academy of Bengal, the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, should go about formulating principles of grammar and usage for a modern variant of Bangla. Shastri was in favour of the new type of linguistic analysis exemplified by Rabindranath Tagore, who began to report the results of his investigations at meetings of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad and to send his texts for publication to such periodicals as the Sahitya Parishad Patrika and Bangadarshan. The historical study of diglossia theory will involve contextualizing Charles Ferguson's early work in terms of its roots in his knowledge of the history of Bangla.
