LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF INDIA BIHAR 2020 LANGUAGE DIVISION OFFICE OF THE REGISTRAR GENERAL, INDIA i CONTENTS Pages Foreword iii-iv Preface v-vii Acknowledgements viii List of Abbreviations ix-xi List of Phonetic Symbols xii-xiii List of Maps xiv Introduction R. Nakkeerar 1-61 Languages Hindi S.P. Ahirwal 62-143 Maithili S. Boopathy & 144-222 Sibasis Mukherjee Urdu S.S. Bhattacharya 223-292 Mother Tongues Bhojpuri J. Rajathi & 293-407 P. Perumalsamy Kurmali Thar Tapati Ghosh 408-476 Magadhi/ Magahi Balaram Prasad & 477-575 Sibasis Mukherjee Surjapuri S.P. Srivastava & 576-649 P. Perumalsamy Comparative Lexicon of 3 Languages & 650-674 4 Mother Tongues ii FOREWORD Since Linguistic Survey of India was published in 1930, a lot of changes have taken place with respect to the language situation in India. Though individual language wise surveys have been done in large number, however state wise survey of languages of India has not taken place. The main reason is that such a survey project requires large manpower and financial support. Linguistic Survey of India opens up new avenues for language studies and adds successfully to the linguistic profile of the state. In view of its relevance in academic life, the Office of the Registrar General, India, Language Division, has taken up the Linguistic Survey of India as an ongoing project of Government of India. It gives me immense pleasure in presenting LSI- Bihar volume. The present volume devoted to the state of Bihar has the description of three languages namely Hindi, Maithili, Urdu along with four Mother Tongues namely Bhojpuri, Kurmali Thar, Magadhi/ Magahi, Surjapuri. The volume is organised into three parts: Part I: Languages of Bihar, Part II: Mother Tongues of Bihar, and Part III: Comparative Lexicon. Bihar is an important state in respect of population, history, religion, geographical position, economy, and politics. The state is bordered by Nepal in the north, by West Bengal in the east, by Uttar Pradesh in the west and by Jharkhand in the south. The state of Bihar finds mention in the Vedas, many Puranas, and ancient Buddhist and Jaina literature. Places in Bihar such as Gaya are associated with Gautama Buddha and the birth and spread of Buddhism throughout the world. It is a sacred place to the Jaina Tirthankaras. In Indian history throughout the ages, Bihar played a very crucial role. Both Bihar and Jharkhand formed part of the Bengal Presidency till 1911, when on 12 December 1911, a separate province of Bihar and Orissa was created. In 1936, Bihar was made a separate province. Bihar has a rich linguistic heritage where different languages like Hindi, Urdu, Angika, Bajjika, Magahi, Maithili and Bhojpuri are predominantly spoken. On the basis of language- cum-cultural landscape, the present-day Bihar can be divided into three distinct categories of sub-regional identities – Maithili, Bhojpuri, and Magadhi. Grierson has described the languages of Bihar as Bihari, which in his scheme of classification belongs to the Eastern group of Hindi, covering an area of 90,000 square miles and is spoken by the 36,000,000 people from the Himalayas on the north to Singhbhum on the South, and from Manbhum on the South-east to Basti on the north-west. Bihari is bounded on the North by the Tibeto- Burman languages of the Himalayas, on the East by Bengali, on the south by Odia, and on the West by the Chhattisgarhi, Bagheli and Awadhi dialects of Eastern Hindi. It is most western of the languages which form the Eastern Group of the Indo-Aryan Vernacular. Grierson further observes that "it is a direct descendant, perhaps the most direct of the descendants, of the old form of speech known as Magadhi Prakrit". In terms of phonology, grammatical structure and the selection of vocabulary, the Bihari occupies the middle place between Bengali and Eastern Hindi. Further, it has closer ethnic affinities with Uttar Pradesh than with Bengal. The term Bihari refers to a group of related dialects- Maithili or Tirhutia, Magahi, and Bhojpuri. Grierson iii divides them into two groups viz., Maithili and Magahi on the one hand, and Bhojpuri on the other. He records local variations in each dialect and on the basis of pronunciation and grammatical forms has indicated three sub-dialects of each. The three dialects are spoken in three geographical regions of Bihar, and they differ from each other on the phonetic, phonemic and grammatical level. In terms of ethnic similarities and dissimilarities, the three linguistic regions refer to three distinct cultural zones of Bihar. While in Mithila, the Brahmanical cultural tradition, based on religious conservatism, dominated the cultural spectrum of social life, the Magadh is connected with the growth, emergence and spread of Buddhism, which rejected the Brahmanical tradition. The medieval period witnessed the infusion of Muslim culture in the Magahi culture and tradition. On the other hand, Bhojpuri region has been referred by Grierson as 'fighting nation of Hindustan’. Suniti Kumar Chatterji holds the opinion that modern languages like Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Magahi, Maithili and Bhojpuri are the representative languages of Magadhi Apabhransa. He classifies the Magadhan speeches into the following three groups: 1. Eastern Magadhan: Bengali, Assamese, Oriya. 2. Central Magadhan: Maithili, Magahi. 3. Western Magadhan: Bhojpuri with Nagpuriya or Sadanji. Grierson calls languages of group 2 and 3 as the Bihari language". Even at the existential level of language perception of the people of Bihar, there does not exist any language like Bihari. People either identify with standardized and sanskritized Hindi or with their mother tongue or local dialects. Moreover, socio-linguistically, it is not important that a language or dialect belongs to a particular language family, but what is important is that such dialect should help people to imagine and cultivate a linguistic kinship in forming a separate and distinct linguistic community. Linguistic variations also connote the variation and change in tradition and culture. Each dialect of the region, besides having some linguistic affinities with each other, forms a separate language group at the social, cultural and political level. It is believed the LSI – Bihar volume which presents a comprehensive picture of the language situation of Bihar will fulfil a longstanding gap in the sphere of language science and will occupy an important position in the dialectal and linguistic studies namely language pedagogy, sociolinguistics, language ethnicity, language and politics. December, 2020 Ali.R.Fatihi Professor Department of Linguistics Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. iv PREFACE With the objective to present updated linguistic scenario, taking account of the changes in our society and territorial boundary as well as in our language resources, the “Linguistic Survey of India” project of the Office of the Registrar General, India, Language Division is under operation state by state since the end of the last century. “Linguistic Survey of India – Bihar” is a work in descriptive linguistics comprising of descriptions of three Languages and four Mother Tongues surveyed in short spells during a long-time span of 1980 – 2000, before the division of erstwhile Bihar into Bihar and Jharkhand states on November 15, 2000. Considering the present scenario of 2 separate states of Bihar and Jharkhand, 3 Languages and 4 Mother Tongues are being presented in this Bihar Volume based on their regional importance, their speakers’ strength, as well as the location where the Survey was conducted in undivided Bihar. The present project is, in all respect, a supplementation and complementation of the ‘Linguistic Survey of India’ by Sir George Abraham Grierson in the pre-Independence India as well as in the first few years of the twentieth century when in the Indian Sub-continent, the present states of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and present-day Bangladesh was part of the same Province called The Bengal Presidency. In the past, this Division had produced successfully the Volumes on Survey Reports of the states of Odisha (former Orissa), Dadra Nagar Haveli, Sikkim (Part 1 & 2), Rajasthan (Part 1) and West Bengal. The result of the present survey under “Linguistic Survey of India – Bihar” has been presented under following Chapters. 1. Introduction being the first Chapter has discussed a. Bihar as a State, its History, Demography and Administrative Units (Maps related to Administrative Divisions as per latest 2011 Census have been included). b. Festivals, Population Density (District- wise Tables included), Male-Female Ratio (District-wise table included) and Rural Urban Division (Maps related to Rural-Urban Distribution of Languages and Mother Tongues have been provided). c. Educational History of Bihar and the present educational scenario (List of Colleges related to Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy, Law and others have been included). d. Linguistic Profile of Bihar (Distribution of Scheduled Languages and Non-Scheduled Languages as per 2001 and 2011 Censuses and also District-wise division of both Scheduled Languages and Non-Scheduled Languages as per both the Censuses) e. Status of Bilingualism and Trilingualism of Surveyed Languages f. A Brief Introduction of all the 3 Languages namely Hindi, Maithili, Urdu and 4 Mother Tongues namely Bhojpuri, Kurmali Thar, Magadhi/Magahi and Surjapuri surveyed under the Volume. 2. Following the Introduction, seven consecutive Chapters are presented. Chapters two to eight of the Volume present the grammatical description of three Languages (chapters two to four) and four Mother Tongues (chapters five to eight). The presentation of the Language/Mother Tongue chapters have followed the alphabetic order (Languages- Hindi, Maithili, Urdu and Mother Tongues- Bhojpuri, Kurmali Thar, Magadhi/Magahi, Surjapuri). The information on bibliographical references has been presented separately at the end of each chapter so there has been no general Bibliography for the Volume. v 3. At the end of the grammatical descriptions, a Comparative Lexicon containing 500 selected lexical items of all the Languages / Mother tongues described have been appended.