It first commissioned Willem Bolt, a Dutch adventurer, to create a grammar for Bengali, but he had to leave India after he ran into trouble with the company. Though there were early attempts to cut Bengali types it was the East India Company's interest in propagating the Bengali language that ultimately prevailed.

Modern Bengali–Assamese script saw further standardisations following the introduction of printing. Old Maithili also used a script similar to the Bengali–Assamese script, and Maithili scholars (particularly of the older generation) still write Sanskrit in that script. While the scripts in Bengal, Assam and Mithila remained similar to each other the Odia script developed a curved top in the 13th–14th century and became increasingly different.

The modern eastern scripts (Bengali-Assamese, Odia, and Maithili) became clearly differentiated around the 14th and 15th centuries from the predecessor Gaudi. Brahmi, an ancient Indian syllabary, is the source of most native Indian scripts including the South Indian languages and Devanagari, the script associated with classical Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages. All of these eastern Magadhan scripts are based on a system of characters historically related to, but distinct from, Devanagari. The Bengali–Assamese script was originally not associated with any particular regional language, but was prevalent as the main script in the eastern regions of Medieval India for Old- and Middle-Indo-Aryan including Sanskrit. Places where the Eastern Nagari script (Purva Nagari) is used The two major alphabets in this script – Assamese and Bengali – are virtually identical, except for two characters, with Assamese differing from Bengali in one letter for the /r/ sound, and an extra letter for the /w/ or /v/ sound. Other languages, such as Bodo, Karbi, Maithili and Mising were once written in this script. īesides Bengali and Assamese it is used to write Bishnupriya, Chakma, Meitei (Manipuri), Santali and other languages -historically, it was used for old and middle Indo-Aryan and it is still used for Sanskrit.

It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic for official use by the Assamese language, Bengali language and Meitei language (officially called ' Manipuri'), three of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic. It is known as Bengali script among Bengali speakers, as Assamese script among Assamese speakers, and Eastern-Nāgarī is used in academic discourse. Gaudi script is considered the ancestor of the script. The Bengali–Assamese script, also known as Eastern Nagari, is a modern eastern Indic script that emerged from the Brahmi script.

Image of Bengali alphabet