Without going deep into the story, we can briefly say that the controversy raged for decades, but Abdul Hakim (1620-1690) in the next century knocked the embargo finally down by writing his famous lines of Noor-Nama, whose angry arguments we give in our meek and passionless translation: "Those who hate the language and knowledge of the country should better leave it and go to a foreign land." An Islamic religious stricture was on the script. Syed Sultan, the author of Nabi-bangsha (1584), was one such author. As early as the fifteenth century, we find a sense of irresolution in most of the Muslim Bengali poets about writing in the Bangla script, which they (wrongly) believed came from Sanskrit, which they termed Hinduyani akshar. It concerned the literary language, which for some centuries was only poetic. This particular controversy dates back to much earlier times than the Pakistan period of Bangladesh, as one may not be too surprised to know.
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