Mithilakshar

Infobox Writing system
name=Mithilakshar, Tirhuta
type=Abugida
languages=Maithili
time=c. 15th–mid 20th century

Mithilakshar (Devanagari script मिथिलाक्षर "mithilākṣar"; Eastern Nagari script: মিথিলাক্ষর) or Tirhuta (Devanagari: तिरहुता "tirhutā"; Eastern Nagari: তিরহুতা) is the traditional script of the Maithili language, an Indo-European language spoken in the Indian state of Bihar and eastern Nepal. The language has a rich history spanning thousands of years, but years of official neglect by the Bihar government and migration have taken their toll on the use of Mithilakshar. Most speakers of the language have switched to using the Devanagari script, which is also used to write neighboring Central Indic languages to the west such as Hindi. As a result, the number of people with a working knowledge of Mithilakshar has dropped considerably in recent years.

Description

Mithilakshar resembles the closely-related Eastern Nagari script, used to write other Eastern Indic languages to the east, such as Bengali and Assamese. In fact, many letters (e.g. ক /k/, খ /kʰ/, দ /d̪/, জ /dʒ/) are written the same in both Mithilakshar and Eastern Nagari. Nevertheless, there are sufficient differences between the two scripts to somewhat impede mutual comprehension. For example, the letter representing the sound /r/ in Mithilakshar has the same form as the Eastern Nagari letter ব /b/, and the Eastern Nagari letter র /r/ has the same shape as the Mithilakshar letter /w/. Furthermore, many of the conjunct letters and vowel signs mean different things in the two scripts. For example, the conjunct ত্ত represents a geminate voiceless unaspirated dental stop /t̪t̪/ in Eastern Nagari script, but it represents the syllable /t̪u/ in Mithilakshar.

History and current status

The oldest specimen of Mithilakshar is a Shaivite temple inscription in Tilkeshwarsthāna near Kusheshwarsthāna in the Darbhangā district of Bihar. In the inscription, it is mentioned in the ancient Magadhi Prakrit language that the temple was built on "Kāttika sudi" in "Shake 125" (AD 203), which is the day following Diwali, a holiday that is still regarded as very auspicious for installing the icon in a temple. The script of this inscription has little difference with modern Mithilakshar.

Despite the near universal switch from Mithilakshar to the Devanagari script for writing Maithili, some traditional pundits still use the script for sending one another ceremonial letters ("pātā") related to some important function such as marriage. Fonts for this script were developed in 2003. An effort is underway to preserve Mithilakshar and develop it for use in digital media by encoding the script in the Unicode standard, for which a proposal [Pandey, Anshuman. 2006. [http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pandey/maithiliroadmap.pdf Request to Allocate the Maithili Script in the Unicode Roadmap] ] has been submitted.

Image gallery

The first two images shown below are samples illustrating the history of Mithilakshar. The first is the sacred sign of Ganesha, called "āñjī", used for millennia by students before beginning Mithilakshar studies. Displayed further below are images of tables comparing the Mithilakshar and Devanagari scripts.

References

External links

# [http://www.Mithialive.com/ Maithili Font Maithili Software]

# [http://www.tirhutalipi.4t.com/ Tirhuta Lipi: Native Script of Maithili]
# [http://www.mithilaonline.com/mithilak.html Mithila Online]
# [http://mithilafont.cjb.net http://mithilafont.cjb.net: Link to download a Tirhuta font]