The paper attempts a re-reading of Bengali nursery rhymes (chharas) beyond their visible elements of fun and irrationality, which have, perhaps, overshadowed their prominent contribution as elements of motherese and early language in infants and toddlers. Apparent equivalents of English nursery rhymes, chharas are short, simple, rhyming, and traditional oral/written verses meant for children, generously seasoned with Bengali cultural connotations (Chatterjee 2024b). As indigenous components of the Bengali literary tradition, chharas, we claim, work as manifestations of motherese, nurturing children’s maturity and awareness. Afia Dil (1971), in this connection, claims that nursery rhymes are manifestations of baby-talk entrusted with roles of socialization, language acquisition, and cultural transmission in the actual context. Bruner (1974) pointed out, ‘In the earliest social interactions of mother and infant, we can trace the development of communicative skills which will provide a base for the later development of speech’. Scholars like Harper (2011), Sayakhan and Bradley (2019) also emphasise how rhymes enhance children’s phonemic skills that later aid in literacy skills. From the above discussions, the nexus of emphatic speech, music, and early language in nursery rhymes is rather unquestionable. The present study, therefore, takes the idea forward in the context of Bengali nursery rhymes, investigating and demonstrating them with examples. The paper analyses eight chharas across their level of complexity through a discourse pragmatic methodology. Preliminary analysis indicates how early elementary chharas exhibit functional responsibilities of motherese. In contrast, later structured chharas seem to inculcate the basics of early language, like numbers, kinship terms, and basic socio-cultural terminologies etc.