Linguistic Survey of India - Bihar

In Bihar, Hindi is the lingua franca and primary language for education. As per the Bihar Official Language Act, 1950, Hindi is one of the official languages of the state. According to the 2011 Census data, Hindi and its varieties are spoken by over 8 million people in the state and approximately 2.6 million consider it as their mother tongue.

In 1989, Urdu became Bihar's second official language. As per the report it is mainly spoken by Muslims who constitute roughly 17 per cent of the state population – with concentrations in districts like Purnia, Darbhanga, and Kishanganj, Madhubani, Sitamarh, Purba Champaran and Muzaffarpur.

Urdu is widely accepted as a medium for teaching in school and colleges. The report states that approximately 25 per cent of Bihar's population reads and writes in Urdu. It adds that the language is widely accepted for various official purposes, including government documents, regulations, and public notifications.

Maithili is the third official language of Bihar. Earlier considered as a dialectal mix of Hindi and Bengali, it received independent language status in 2003. The 1991 Census lists Maithili as a mother tongue under Hindi. However, the 2001 Census lists it as one of the Scheduled Languages in India. As per the 2011 Census, it is one of the 22 scheduled languages with roughly 4.5 crore speakers, making it the 16th most spoken language in India and the 40th worldwide.

Bhojpuri, one of the mother tongues of Bihar, is spoken majorly in the western districts of the state. As per the 2011 Census, there are roughly 10 million Bhojpuri speakers in Bihar. As the third largest Indian language spoken outside India, Bhojpuri is also spoken in certain parts of Nepal, Guyana, Suriname, Fiji, Trinidad, Tobago and Mauritius where speakers had migrated to work in the sugar plantations during the British rule.

Bhojpuri’s grammatical structure differs from other Bihari languages with respect to the (inflections that show up on the noun) and conjugation. The report adds that the Bhojpuri grammar is simpler than Maithili and Magahi. Rich in oral tradition, it is written in Kaithi script – however, in recent times, there is an increasing preference for Devanagari script.

Kurmali Thar is an Indo-aryan language spoken by the speakers of Dravidian (southern) descent now residing in the Aryan belt. Associated with the Kudumi Mahato community in Bihar, a form of Magahi spoken by the Kurmi caste in Manbhum and Kharswan spoken in Kurmali came to be called Kurmali Thar, according to the Language Handbook on Mother Tongues in Census 1971. The word ‘thar’ refers to the ‘fashion’ in Kurmali language.

According to the 2011 Census, only 103 speakers in Bihar listed Kurmali Thar as their mother tongue. Lacking its own script, Kurmali can be written using the Kurmali Chis script, Kaithi and/or Devanagari. It is referred to as Kudmali language and called Panchpargania when used as a trade language.

Magahi language has its roots in the ancient Magadhi Prakrit, considered as the language of the Buddha and the Magadha kingdom. Like Bhojpuri and Maithili, it is part of a larger group of languages in the eastern zone of Indo-aryan languages and has roughly 13 million speakers.

The Magahi and Eastern Magahi are believed to be two distinct forms of the language. While the former is mainly spoken in Patna, Gaya and other districts around, the latter is mainly spoken in the southern districts of Bihar.

Surjapuri – grouped under Hindi – is predominantly spoken in Kishangunj, Purnia district in Bihar. Although reported as Siriapuria and Kishangunjia by Grierson in his LSI, the name ‘Surjapuri’ was retained in the 1961 Census. It reported 26,947 speakers then. As per the 2011 Census, the language is known as both Surjapuri/Kishanganjia and has recorded 18,57,930 speakers.

Surjapuri consists of a set of classifiers that get attached to modifiers as well as nouns and numerals. This phenomenon is rare and rarely found in the other Indo-Aryan languages.

Focus and Factoids by Ritu Sharma.