Subject

Bangladesh Heritage & culture ( BHC-101 )

Submitted to:
Professor : Luthfor rahaman joy. Shanto-Mariam University of Creative Technology Uttara Dhaka.

Submitted by:
Nilufar yeasmin Id :061031024 6th Batch 8th Semester Graphic Design & Multimedia Smuct

Bangladesh Country Profile

Bangladesh is situated in the northeastern part of South Asia. It lies between 20~34' and 26~36' north latitude and 88~1' and 92~41' east longitude. The heavy and great Himalayas stand as the northern ramparts, while the southern frontier is guarded by the Bay of Bengal. On the West lies the expansive genetic plains (West Bengal) of India and on the eastern frontier lies the almost impassable forest of Myanmar ( Arakan Province) and India (Tripura and Assam hills). These picturesque geographical boundaries delineate out a low lying plain of about 144,000 sq. KM crises-crossed by innumerable brooks, rivers, rivulets and streams. Mighty rivers the Padma, Jamuna, Meghna, Karnaphuli and others flow through Bangladesh. The unscalable blue is stretched high above, and the green and silvery landscape below runs far beyond. This is Bangladesh, a fertile land where nature is bounteous

Economy Bangladesh is an agricultural country. The total cultivable area is around 23 million acres and there are a little more than 14.5 million cultivators. Major agricultural products are rice, jute, (the golden fiber), wheat, potato, pulses, sugarcane, tea tobacco etc. The country is the world's largest exporter of jute and jute goods. Tea is also one of the major foreign exchange earners. Bangladesh also exports frozen shrimps, frog legs and handicrafts. There has also been a rapid growth in manufacturing industries, which offer a wide range of exportable goods such as leather goods and ready-made garments. Within the last few years' remittances from Bangladeshis employed abroad have contributed largely toward foreign exchange earnings

Climate and Seasons The climate is sub-tropical with temperatures ranging from a daytime low 18~ C in the cold reason to a maximum of 40~ C in the summer. Annual rainfall ranges from 160-cm. To 2000 cm in west, 200 cm to 400 cm, in the south-east and

250 cm. to 400 cm. in the north-east mainly in monsoon. The country has mainly four seasons, winter (Dec- Feb), summer (Mar-May), Monsoon (June-Sep) and Autumn (Oct-Nov). The winter is the most pleasant season when average maximum and minimum temperatures and

Demography Bangladesh has got a population of about 120 million, making it the most densely populated country in the world, 85% live in rural areas. Density of population per sq. km is 764. There are about a million tribal people. They live in the hilly regions of Sylhet, Mymensingh, Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. The citizens of Bangladesh are known as Bangladeshi. Bangladeshis are simple, polite and courteous. They are friendly and hospitable towards visitors.

Language The state language and mother tongue is Bangla. English is also spoken and understood.

Religion Bangladesh is a land of religious freedom and tolerance. People of all caste, creed and religion live here in perfect harmony. Approximate ratio of population on the basis of religion is as follows: Muslims 86.6%, Hindus 12.1%, Buddhists 0.6%, Christian 0.4% and other 0.3%.

Transportation Air : Bangladesh can be reached by air from any part of the world. Biman Bangladesh Airline connects Dhaka with 29 major cities of the world. It also operates in 7 domestic routes. Beside Biman, several Leading International carriers fly to and from Dhaka. Rail : The Bangladesh Railway provides an service to please of interest such as Chittagong, Sylhet, Khulna, Mymensingh, Bogra, Rajshahi, Dinajpur starting from Dhaka, The inter city Express service is available to and from important cities at cheap fares. Bus/Coach Services : Road transport in Bangladesh is predominantly a private sector affair. Rates are among the cheapest in the world. Express and non-stop services are available to principal towns from bus terminals in Dhaka. The Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) also maintains a country-wide network of bus service.

General Information Wearing apparel: Tropical in summer and light woolen in winter. Currency: Taka (TK) is the unit of currency. The taka is equal to 100 paisa (smallest unit). Notes of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 500 taka and coins of 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 and 500 paisa are in circulation. Banking Thursday hours: 9.00 9.00 am -5.00 am pm on Sunday Wednesday pm

2.00

Closed on Friday & Saturday. Time difference: GMT 6+

Working Hours: Office House 9.00 am - 5.00 pm.

Investment Opportunity in Bangladesh Private investment from overseas countries is welcome in all most all areas of the economy. Such investment can be made either independently or through joint venture on mutually beneficial terms and conditions. In other words, 100 percent foreign investment is, however, specially desirable in the following areas:

Export - oriented industries; Industries in the export processing zones; High technology products which are either import - substitutes or exportoriented;

Undertaking in which more diversified use of indigenous natural resources is possible;

Basic industries, depending mainly on local raw materials; Investment towards improvements in quality and marketing of goods manufactured and or ncrease f production capacities of existing industries;

Labour intensive/technology intensive/capital intensive industries

Visiting Bangladesh Visit to Bangladesh is not a problem at all. The people of Bangladesh are extremely friendly and accept the visitor cordially. Hospitality is a age old traditional of Bangladesh. To Visit Bangladesh the following documentation are required: 1. One can obtain for visa before departure from Bangladesh Embassy/High Commission.

Provision for obtaining visa for short visit are also available at Zia International Airport

Fairs & Festivals of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a country where colourful fairs and festivals are held throughout the year in a befitting manner and with great zeal and zest. With changes in social and economic structures, the nature of festivals also changes, but some festivals are so deeply rooted in the social organism that they continue to entertain people from generation to generation. Some of the festivals bear the mark of the community and nation, some have the stamp of religion, and again some bear the impress of politics.

Festivals, which evolved in the primitive society out of the prayer for food, have now become varied and colourful. The main foundation of festivals is ritual and most of the ancient rituals were collective activities. Many of the rituals were related to agriculture and their dates were determined according to the lunar calendar. The ancient rituals were magical processes to tame supernatural powers; in subsequent cultures, this characteristic feature was usually retained. The spontaneous agro-based ancient festivals lost their spontaneity with the passage of time and became more formal. There is no reliable information about the historical origin of fairs but researchers claim that they started about 3000 years back. It is certain, though, that the early fairs expressed the collective joy of the ancient people. Today fairs are a mix of tradition and modernity. Some of the major fairs are described below.

Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Azha

The main Muslim festivals are Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Azha. From time to time folk culture has influenced these festivals, as a result of which the original religious practices have changed. Eid-ul-Fitr is observed after the end of the month of Ramadan.

Durga Puja The biggest religious festival of the Hindu community in Bangladesh is the festival of Durga Puja. Hindus participate in this festival with great devotion. Durga Puja is an old festival but it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty exactly how old it is. Buddha Purnima, Baisakhi Purnima and Christmas day Apart from the Hindus, there are also two other minority religions communities in Bangladesh, viz., the Christians and the Buddhists, who observe religious festivals of their own.

Baisakhi Mela Celebrations of Pahela Baisakh started from Emperor Akbar's reign. It was customary to clear up all the year's dues on the last day of Chaitra (the twelfth month of the Bengali calendar). On the following day, or the first day of the new year, landlords would entertain their tenants with sweets. On this occasion fairs used to be organized there.

Amor Ekushey Grontho Mela (Book Fair)

Amor Ekushey February is a historic day for the Bengali nation. On that day five valiant sons of this country laid down their lives to win recognition for Bangla as a State language.

Muharram Muharram or the 'sacred month' is the first month of the Islamic or Hijri calendar. The tenth day of Muharram is called Ashura. Imam Husain (R) the grandson of the Holy Prophet (SM) was killed on this day at the hands of the troops of Yazid.

Baisabi Festival

Baisabi is the main social festival of the indigenous people living in the hill districts of Rangamati, Bandarban and Khagrachhari. This festival is celebrated

by the Chakma and Tanchyanga as "Biju", by Marmas as "Shangrai", Tripuras as "Baisuk" or "Baisu".

Dubla Rash Mela Dubla Rash Mela is not only a big fair for Bagerhat, it is undoubtedly one of the biggest fairs in the country. At the centre of the festival are twenty thousand temporary fishermen who are engaged in catching and drying fish on Dubla and nearby islands. In the Bangla month of Agrahayan every year, the fair continues for 5-7 days during full moon time.

Fair of Adinath Moheshkhali is an island under Cox's Bazar district not very far from the mainland. There, the Adinath temple at the top of Mainak hillock is a place of worship for Hindu devotees. A landlord named Nur Mohammad Shikdar donated 200 acres of land to reconstruct the age-old Adinath Temple. The fair associated with the temple started from that time.

Golakandail Fair From the 1st day of the Bengali month of Mag - 7, a fair is held in Golakandail village of Rupganj upazila under Narayanganj district for seven days under a big banyan tree. Nobody knows the origin of the fair but it has continued for ages and is full of fun and festivity.

Gurpukur Fair Every year the last day of the Bengali month of Bhadra is the occasion for worshipping the snake goddess (Monsha Puja), and a fair is held on the occasion at Shatkhira in a place named Gurpukur.

Shib Chaturdashi Fair A thousand-year-old Shiva temple stands at the top of the Chandranath hill located at Sitakunda in Chittagong where many other old temples are also situated in various parts of the 500 metre high hill. Thousands of devotees gather in the temple at night on 14th Falgun. The famous fair of Shib Chaturdashi continues for three days following religious rituals.

Langalbandh Fair Every year on the 8th day of the Iunar month falls in the Bengali month of Chaitra, thousands of Hindu devotees from home and abroad assemble on the banks of the old Brahmaputra river for Astami snan, a ritual bath in the river. On the occasion, a three-day fair is held in this place, starting before the day of Ashtami snan (Bath) and ending a day after the bathing ceremony.

Kothin Chibor Dan Fair 'Kothin Chibor Dan' is a Buddhist ceremony on which occasion 'viksus' are given 'chibor' or cloth to wear. Buddhists believe that this is the best of all gifts. Chibor, the cloth that viksus wear, may be of any six colours: those of a tree's roots, trunk, bark, dry leaves, fruit or flower.

Fair of Ghoshbila The fair is also known as Baruni fair. In fact, there is a ghat in the village Ghoshbila under Alamdanga upazila of Chuadanga district which is considered a holy place by the Hindus as a legend says that the goddess Ganga once appeared here. Since then a fair has been organized at that place to commemorate the day of her arrival.

Fair of Ashwin Sankranti

One of the renowned fairs of Rajshahi is held in a village of Durgapur upazila named Khulshi. The fair is held on the bank of the river for the first three days of the Bengali month of Ashwin.

Children's Amusement Fair The Children's Academy has been organizing a children's amusement fair since 1978 in Dhaka. Usually the fair is organized in the open space in front of the Academy. Many stalls full of books, science exhibits, cane products, handicrafts, pottery, hand stitched items, children's art and wall newspaper are the attractions of the fair.

Baul Mela On the occasion of Lalon Shah's birthday, the folk singers (Bauls) perform Lalon's songs, usually under a banyan tree or on the bank of a river near a village and a group of people organize a fair at the spot. Rural musical instruments, handicrafts, pottery, light snacks and household items are available in the fair which runs for three days or in some places one week or even longer than that.

Bengali language .Bengali or Bangla (Bengali: , pronounced [bala]) 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. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages (ranking fifth[2] or sixth[3]) in the world. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 10001200 AD from the Magadhi Prakrit, a declined, vernacular form of the ancient

Sanskrit language. It is now the primary language spoken in Bangladesh and is the second most spoken language in India.[5][6] With its long and rich literary tradition, Bengali serves to bind together a culturally diverse region. In 1952, when Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan, this strong sense of identity led to the Bengali Language Movement, in which several people braved bullets and died on February 21. This day has now been declared as the International Mother Language Day. History

Genealogically, Bengali belongs to the group of Eastern Indo-Aryan languges, here marked in yellow. Like other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages of the Indian subcontinent. Magadhi Prakrit and Maithili, the earliest recorded spoken languages in the region and the language of the Buddha, evolved into Ardhamagadhi ("Half Magadhi") in the early part of the first millennium CE.[7][8] Ardhamagadhi, as with all of the Prakrits of North India, began to give way to what are called Apabhramsa languages just before the turn of the first millennium.[9] The local Apabhramsa language of the eastern subcontinent, Purvi Apabhramsa or Apabhramsa Abahatta, eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups: the Bihari languages, the Oriya

languages, and the Bengali-Assamese languages. Some argue that the points of divergence occurred much earliergoing back to even 500[10] but the language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects. For example, Magadhi Prakrit is believed to have evolved into Apabhramsa Abahatta around the 6th century which competed with Bengali for a period of time.[11] Usually three periods are identified in the history of Bengali:[9] 1. Old Bengali (900/10001400)texts include Charyapada, devotional songs; emergence of pronouns Ami, tumi, etc; verb inflections -ila, -iba, etc. Oriya and Assamese branch out in this period. 2. Middle Bengali (14001800)major texts of the period include

Chandidas's Srikrishnakirtan; elision of word-final sound; spread of compound verbs; Persian influence. Some scholars further divide this period into early and late middle periods. 3. New Bengali (since 1800)shortening of verbs and pronouns, among other changes (e.g. tahar tar "his"/"her"; koriyachhil korechhilo he/she had done). Historically closer to Pali, Bengali saw an increase in Sanskrit influence during the Middle Bengali (Chaitanya era), and also during the Bengal Renaissance.[12][citation
needed]

Of the modern Indo-European languages in South

Asia, Bengali and Marathi maintain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base while Hindi and others such as Punjabi, Sindhi and Gujarati are more influenced by Arabic and Persian.[13]

Shaheed Minar, or the Martyr's monument, in Dhaka, commemorates the struggle for the Bengali language. Until the 18th century, there was no attempt to document Bengali grammar. The first written Bengali dictionary/grammar, Vocabolario em idioma Bengalla, e Portuguez dividido em duas partes, was written by the Portuguese missionary Manoel da Assumpcam between 1734 and 1742 while he was serving in Bhawal.[14] Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, a British grammarian, wrote a modern Bengali grammar (A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778)) that used Bengali types in print for the first time.[1] Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Bengali reformer,[15] also wrote a "Grammar of the Bengali Language" (1832). During this period, the Choltibhasha form, using simplified inflections and other changes, was emerging from Shadhubhasha (older form) as the form of choice for written Bengali.[16] Bengali was the focus, in 195152, of the Bengali Language Movement (Bhasha Andolon) in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).[17] Although the Bengali language was spoken by the majority of Pakistan's population, Urdu was legislated as the sole national language.[18] On February 21, 1952, protesting students and activists were fired upon by military and police in Dhaka University and three young students and several other people were killed. [19] Later in 1999, UNESCO decided to celebrate every 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the deaths of the three students. [20][21] In a separate event on May 19, 1961, police in Silchar, India, killed eleven people who were protesting legislation that mandated the use of the Assamese language.

Art

&

Literature

of

Bangladesh

Bangladesh has a rich tradition of Art. Speciniens of ancient terracota and pottery show remarkable artistry. Modern painting was pioneered by artists like Zainul Ahedin, Qamrul Hasan. Anwarul Haque, Shafiuddin Ahnied, Shafiqul Amin, Rashid Chowdhury and S.M. Sultan. Zainul Ahedin earned worldwide fame by his stunning sketches of the Bengal Famine in 1943.

Other famous artists of Bangladesh are Abdur Razzak, Qayyum Chowdhury, Murtaza Baseer, Aminul Islam, Debdas Chakraborty, Kazi Abdul Baset, Syed Jahangir, and Mohammad Kibria

The earliest available specimen of Bengali literature is about a thousand years old. During the mediaeval period. Bengali Literature developed considerably with the patronage of Muslim rulers. Chandi Das, Daulat Kazi and Alaol are some of the famous poets of the period. The era of modern Bengali Literature began in the late nineteenth century Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Laureate is a vital part of Bangalee culture. Kazi Nazrul Islam, Michael Madhusudan Datta. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhaya, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhaya, Mir Mosharraf Hossain and Kazi Ahdul Wadud are the pioneers of modern Bengali Literature.

Habitat and Traditional Technology

Bangladesh having a lots of habitat and traditional technologies those are housing pattern, rural, settlement, pattern and tribal.

Elay house, thatched house, use of bamboo, cane, wood, docala, chou-chala etc. Ponds, gardens for fruits and vegetables, urban houseing ,building, four storied, multi storied, interior archeatecture etc. Those kind of houses are founded in the villages and different types of houses are found in the forest areas in Bangladesh.

Those houses which was made by bamboo was a traditional houses in this country. The housing buildings, four storied, multi storied, interior archetecture are found in the cities of Bangladesh.

Traditional Shopping Bangladesh is indeed a shoppers' paradise with a rich tradition in handicrafts, often available at throwaway prices. While the muslin of ancient Dhaka has become past history, other products such as contemporary paintings, wood works, cotton, silk, gold, silver, jute, reed, brassware, traditional dolls and leather goods also receive deep appreciation from the lovers of arts and crafts.

Bangladesh is famous for its natural pink pearl. Products made from the hides and skins of animals, intricate woodcarvings, cane and bamboo products, conchshell, bangles, embroidered quilts, jamdani and silk fabrics are good buys.

Duty free sales and Display Centres run by Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (NTO) are located at Zia International Airport, Dhaka. Shah Amanat International Airport, Chittagong and Osmani International Airport, Sylhet. This shops enjoy the reputation of being well established, with a wide range of quality goods at reasonable prices.

Cane used to be exported from Bengal until the mid-nineteenth century. The pulp of the fruit is edible. There are a good numbet of local varieties of canes found in Bangladesh, out of which golla bet, kadam bet, sundi bet, kora bet, udam bet, jali bet, bara bet are used widely. These are found in the hill forest of Chittagong, Cox's Bazar, Chittagong Hill tracts and Sylhet.