• noted Bengali writer Rajnarayan Basu was a tutor of Asia's first Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore?
• the tyranny and the perceived dread of Gobindram Mitter, a British deputy in Calcutta, earned him a place in a Bengali rhyme?
• a version of the traditional Bengali panjika, the Hindu astrological almanac, comes with an interactive CD-ROM?
• Mukh O Mukhosh (The face and the mask), directed by Abdul Jabbar Khan, is the first full-length Bengali language feature film to be produced in the erstwhile East Pakistan, which later became Bangladesh?
• Indian author and journalist Peary Chand Mitra played a leading role in the Bengal renaissance in the 19th century and became known as the "Dickens of Bengal" due to his clear Bengali prose?
• Leela Majumdar, author of children's books, translated Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea into Bengali?
• Hindi, Bengali, and Portuguese have all recently been proposed as official languages of the United Nations?

Facts on topics related to Bengali language

Sanskrit

• historian P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar believed that Kanchipuram was the southernmost outpost of Sanskrit culture during the pre-Pallava period?
• Arthur W. Ryder taught the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit to J. Robert Oppenheimer, who said it shaped his philosophy of life and famously quoted it at the Trinity nuclear test explosion?
• Chavundaraya, the builder of the Gomateshwara monolith (pictured) at Shravanabelagola, was an army commander, minister and a famous writer of Kannada and Sanskrit literature?
• Lingyan Temple in Shandong, China features a nine-storey Song Dynasty pagoda, named the Pizhi Pagoda (pictured) from the Sanskrit word pratyeka?
• Kirātārjunīya, a Sanskrit poem by Bharavi, is known both for its depth and its wordplay, including a symmetric verse that reads the same forward, backward, horizontally and vertically?
• Shishupala Vadha, a Sanskrit epic poem by Magha, contains what has been called "the most complex and exquisite type of palindrome ever invented"?
• a Vihara is an Indian Buddhist cave monastery that takes its name from the Sanskrit word for "a secluded place in which to walk"?
• former Thai Minister of Education M.L. Pin Malakul created a slide rule for calculating the day of week of any given date despite being required to study Sanskrit rather than mathematics?
• investment banker John P. Clay pursued his interest in Sanskrit literature by endowing the Clay Sanskrit Library, a 100-volume series of Sanskrit works translated into English?
• many sex positions derive their Sanskrit names from that of the Hindu goddess of sexual pleasure – Rati (pictured with her husband, the lovegod Kama)?

Punjabi language

• Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh is the son of former cricketer-turned-Punjabi actor Yograj Singh?
• Punjabi film-star Yograj Singh was a former Test cricketer and father of current Indian batsman Yuvraj Singh?
• the lyrics of the debut song of Indian rock musician Rabbi Shergill were written by the 18th century Punjabi poet Bulleh Shah?

Hindi

• Hindi is the language used for educational and official matters in Bihari culture?
• Hindi, Bengali, and Portuguese have all recently been proposed as official languages of the United Nations?

Sinhala language

• Nymphaea nouchali (pictured) is the national flower of Sri Lanka where it is known as Nil Manel in Sinhala?
• in the Sinhala novel Madol Doova, the two protagonists Upali and Jinna go to live on a "haunted" island?
• the Vedda language is a Creole language based on Sinhalese of Sri Lanka rather than a dialect?

Marathi language

• Durga Khote was famous for her character roles and was the heroine of the first Marathi talkie?