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The area possesses about 462 thousand square kilometers. Most of this area is riparian lowland, the lower courses of the Brahmaputra and Ganga
The shared delta is a weave of rivers: The Ganga sends a little water down the Hugli (Hooghly) and much water down the Padma. The Brahmaputra sends most of its water away from the historic course and into the Jamuna, which flows into the Padma. The Padma flows into a river of local origins, the Meghna, which splits before reaching the Bay of Bengal.
More than 255 million people live here! The majority speak Bengali. The majority in Bangladesh is Moslem; the majority in পশিচণবনগ (Paścimbangga), भारत (Bhārat), is Hindu.
The metropolitan areas of over a million are: Chattagam (Chittagong), Dhaka (Dacca) and Khulna in Bangladesh; and কলকাতা (Kolkata)
Indo-Aryans arrived in the late first millenium C.E. Around 1000 C.E., Oriya, Bengali and Assamese were still one language. Assamese had separated by about 1400.
Before the Indo-Aryans arrived, the area was inhabited by speakers of Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages. Munda languages have been spoken in the area for 2,000 years or more, as probably have Mon-Khmer languages. Santali is a Munda language, and Munda languages are Austro-Asiatic languages, as are some languages of southeast Asia. The connections are established but distant, so it is presumed they diverged from a common ancestry thousands of years ago. From this, it is presumed that Austro-Asiatic languages were spoken over a wide area of south and southeast Asia before the arrival of more recent groups such as the Indo-Aryans. There is no positive proof, nor is there contradictory evidence; Indo-Aryan and subsequent literature does not speak of later migrations, for example. So it can be tentatively asserted that the Munda were in this area 3,000 or more years ago.
Proto-Bodo was probably the language of the Assamese lowlands 2,000 years ago. At least some of the languages of the Kuki-Naga grouping moved to this area from the east, proably at least some centuries ago, as attested by a placename.
In the 13th century, speakers of Ahom, a member of the Tai linguistic group, conquered the lower Brahmaputra valley, but over the centuries they were assimulated.
Animism was presumably practiced before the world religions arrived; there are still a few practicioners in the highlands.
Indo-Aryans, perhaps Sanskrit-speaking, arrived by the first millenium B.C.E. The religion of the elites, as subsequently recorded in scriptures, focused on a pantheon that included Indra, Varuna and Soma. Over time, it embraced more beliefs and abstracted some original ones, and evolved into Hinduism. During this transformation, Buddhism, Jainism and Ajivikaism also arose. Jains and Ajivikas were locally prominent early on, later followed by a mix of Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. Some groups were converted to Buddhism as late as the 18th century. Later on the latter two had faded, leaving forms of Hinduism--Vaisnavism, Saivism and Sakta. Islam arrived by conquest after 1300. Christianity was introduced by missionaries starting in the 19th century; there are Christian ethnic groups today.
Bangladesh; Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura
Paścimbangga, Sikkim; Druk Yul
1. Desh means nation or state in Bengali.
2. India is the other official name (in English).
3. There should be a diglyph/ conjunct for শচ which would eliminate one vertical line, and there should be a diglyph/ conjunct for নগ which would have the core of the second glyph dangle from a curvy version of the first glyph and with a horizontal line with a small loop below it and with no vertical line.
4. The Indian national government may not have approved this name, but the state government uses it. See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/49/West_Bengal_State_Emblem.jpg, accessed July 18, 2018 for seal. The English name of the state is West Bengal. Paścim (transliterated Hindi) means west.
5. Phrukh Yul is phoneticDzongka and Druk Yul is the conventional representation. The nation is called Bhutan in English.
6. Ganges in English.
7. Formerly Calcutta. The metropolitan area includes হাওড়া (Hāora), which has over a million residents.
8. The Chindwin River in Myanmar flows to the east of where the Chin languages now are.