Bengali is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language that originated from the Middle Indo-Aryan language by the natives of present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh in the 4th to 7th century.

After the conquest of Nadia in 1204 AD, Islamic rule began in Bengal, which influenced the Bengali language. The middle or late 14th century is marked as the end of Old Bengal and the beginning of Middle Bengal.

Modern Bengali dates back to 1800 AD. It marked the renaissance of Bengali, as well as incorporating borrowings from European languages. Significant changes in verbs and pronouns occurred during this period, which marked the contraction of most verbs and pronouns.

Although the Bengali language is an Indo-Aryan language, it also has pre-Aryan roots. In the past, Bengal was far from Vedic or Aryan culture. Bengal, except for some parts in the south-east, was part of the Magadha Empire.

The languages spoken primarily by the native people of Bengal were part of the Eastern Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Aryan language family. These included dialects of the Magadhi (or Gaudī) group, which were primarily spoken in the region between Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam.

The development of the Bengali language from Curésenter was influenced mainly by Pali. This influence, in a contact situation has an impact primarily in the vocabulary of Bengali language and as a result not only tatsama words are accumulated in the Bengali vocabulary but also this lexical diffusion resulted in diachronic change by developing ardhatatsama and tadbhava words.

The people of ancient Bengal initially spoke a Prakrit language, which was known as Magadhi, or on the contrary, Gaudi. Later, it evolved into Old Bengali. Most Bengali-speaking people today consider Old Bengali to be intelligible to a certain extent, although most of the words most commonly used in modern Bengali have their roots in Old Bengali.

Middle Bengali is a form of the Bengali language that was used roughly from 1200 to the end of the 18th century.