Maithili was spoken in the ancient land of Mithila and so it has incurred the name Maithili. Tirhutia is another name for the region so Maithili is also known as Tirhutia. The people in Nepal and North-Eastern Bihar speak in this language. It is a language of Indo-Aryan origin.
The cultural and linguistic centers of Maithili in Bihar are the districts of Madhubani, Supaul, Araria, Darbhanga, Sitamarhi, Saharsa, Begusarai, Muzaffarpur, Sheohar, Samastipur, and Vaishali . Maithili is also spoken in the Terai region of Nepal, mainly in Narayani Zone, Janakpur Zone, Koshi Zone, and Sagarmatha Zone of Nepal.
In Nepal, Maithili is the second state language and is used by 12% of the total population. Here, Maithili was used in the court of the Kings, during Malla period.
Near about 30 million people in the 26 districts of N.E. Bihar speak in Maithili. The Sahitya Akademi, India and P.E.N (an international organization of letters for Poets, Essayists and Novelists) have recognized Maithili.
It ranks 40th among the most spoken languages of the world, while it occupies the 16th position in the list of the most spoken languages in India. Maithilakshar or Tirhuta is its own script, which originated from Brahmi (a script of the 3rd B.C., also found in the Ahokan Inscriptions). At present the Devanagari script has been adopted because of its widespread use.
It is generally believed that the Sidhhacharyas evolved Proto Maithili during the 8th -9th century when they composed Charyapada. Since then the language has progressed steadily. Vidyapati, a very productive writer has used Avahatta, a form of Proto Maithili in his dramas, the Kirtilata and Kirtipataka. He also composed melodious poems depicting the love of Radha-Krishna in his Padavali that is written in the Maithili of medieval period. Vidyapati also influenced Nepali, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya and Manipuri literature during the medieval period.
Linguists have classified Maithili as one of the Indo-Aryan languages. It is an offshoot of the Indo-Aryan languages, which is a branch of the Indo-European languages. Early Indo-Aryan languages (2500 BC to 500 BC) developed from Vedic Samskrit to Laukik Samskrit. Middle Indo-Aryan Languages (500 BC to 1000 AD) developed from Pali (early Prakrit, 500 BC to 100 BC) to Prakrit (middle Prakrit, 100 BC to 500 AD), Apbhramsha (neo Prakrit, 500 AD to 900 AD) and Avhattha (neo regional Prakrit, 900 AD to 1100 AD). From neo Magadhi Prakrit and its Variant Maithil Avahattha came Maithili Language (1000 AD). It is in the category of Modern Indo-Aryan Language (1000 AD to till date). Linguists consider Maithili to be an Eastern Indic language.
The first grammar of Maithili was written in the year 1880–81. A. F. Rudolf Hoernle published a Grammar of the Eastern Hindi from London in 1880 and compared with the other Gaudian Languages. In this Grammar, Dr. Hoernle recognized Maithili as a dialect distinct from Hindi. He was able to give some specimens of its grammatical forms, but no published materials were then available. The mis-classification by early linguists led to language politics in respect of Maithili. Beames (1872/reprint 1966: 84-85) considered Maithili as a dialect of Bengali. Grierson, however, adopted the notional term "Bihari" language for the language used in Bihar; it has since been shown to be a misnomer for Maithili.
Maithili is derived from Avahattha, the Maithil Apabhramsha, which is derived from Magadhi Apbhramsha. Maithili was traditionally written in the Maithili script (also known by the names Tirhuta, i.e., Mithilakshar) and Kaithi script. The ISO of Unicode Technical Committee has approved the encoding of Kaithi and Tirhuta scripts. Nowadays, Devanagari script is most is most commonly used. An effort is underway to preserve the Maithili script and to develop it for use in digital media by encoding the script in the Unicode standard, for which proposals have been submitted by Sh. Anshuman Pandey (now it has been approved by the ISO, the Unicode Technical Committee).
The term Maithili comes from Mithila, which was an independent state in ancient times. Mithila is important in Hindu mythology, since it is regarded as the birth place of Goddess Sita, the daughter of King Janak of Mithila, who eventually gets married to Lord Rama.
The most famous literary figure in Maithili is the poet Vidyapati (1350–1450), who wrote his poems in the language of the people, i.e. Maithili, at a time when state's official language used to be Sanskrit and Sanskrit was still being used as a literary language. The use of Maithili, instead of Sanskrit, in literature became more common after Vidyapti.
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