Bihari Language

BIHARI LANGUAGE (properly Bihdri), the most west ern speech of the eastern group of modern Indo-Aryan languages. "Bihari" means the language spoken in the province of "Bihar." To the west it extends over the province of Agra so far as the longitude of Benares, and to the south it covers nearly the whole of the province of Chota Nagpur. It is also the language of the inhabitants of the neighbouring Tarai districts of Nepal (see INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES). While an outer language, it shows points of contact with the intermediate ones. As regards s, the Magadhi Prakrit pronounced it as s, like the sh in "shin." The Prakrits of the West preserved its dental sound, like that of the s in "sin." Here Bengali and Eastern Hindi exactly represent the ancient state of affairs. The former has the .`-sound and the latter the s-sound. At the present day Bihari pronounces its s's as clearly as in the West. The pronunciation of s is a literal shibboleth between Bengal and Upper India. For centuries Bihar has been connected politically with the `'Vest, and has rid itself of the typical pronunciation of the East. On the other hand, in the Kaithi character, s is always written s`. In the declension of nouns, Bihari follows Bengali more closely than Eastern Hindi, and its conjugation is based on the principles which obtain in the former language.

Bihari has three main dialects, which fall into two divisions, an eastern and a western. The eastern division includes Maithili or Tirhutid and Magahi. Magahi is the modern representative of the purest Magadhi Prakrit. It is nearly related to Maithili, but it is quite uncultivated and has no literature. Maithili is the dialect of the old country of Mithild or Tirhut, famous from ancient times for its learning. It has retained numerous anti quated forms, and parts of its grammar are extraordinarily com plex. It has a small literature. The Bhojpuri dialect has extended south-east into the southern half of Chota Nagpur. It might al most be classed as a separate language, had it any literature worthy of the name.

(Abbreviations: Mth. = Maithili, Mg. = Magahi,j puri., B. = Bihari, Bg.=Bengali, Skr. =Sanskrit, Pr. = Prakrit, Mg.Pr.=Magadhi Prakrit.) V ocabulary.—Tatsamas, or words borrowed in modern times from Sanskrit (see INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES), are few in number, while all the dialects are replete with honest home-born tadbhavas, used both in the literary and in the colloquial language. Very few words are borrowed from Persian, Arabic, or other languages.

Phonetics.

The stress-accent of Bihari follows the usual rules of modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars. As a general statement we may say that Bihari spelling is not fixed, and that there are often many ways of writing, and sometimes two or three ways of pronouncing the same word.

The genius of the Bihari language is adverse to the existence of a long vowel in a tadbhava word, when it would occupy a position more than two syllables from the end. This is subject to various subsidiary rules which will be found in the grammars. The principle is a most important one, and, indeed, pervades all Indo-Aryan vernaculars of the present day, but it is carried out with the greatest thoroughness and consistency in Bihari. The whole system of declension and conjugation is subject to it.

Declension.

Bihari has a stronger sense of gender than the other languages of the eastern group. In the modern language the distinction is in the main confined to animate beings, but in the older poetry the system of grammatical, as distinct from sexual, gender is in full swing. Except in the case of the interrog ative pronoun, there is no neuter gender—words which in Skr. and Pr. were neuter being generally, but not always, treated as masculine. The plural can everywhere be formed by the addition of some noun of multitude to the singular.

Cases are usually formed, as elsewhere, by suffixing postpo sitions to a general oblique case, usually the same as the nomi native. There is no case of the agent, as in Hindustani ; the sub ject of all tenses of all verbs being always in the nominative.

Every noun can have three forms, a short, a long, and a re dundant. The short form is sometimes weak and sometimes strong. Occasionally both weak and strong forms occur for the same word. The long and redundant forms are mainly used in conversation. They are familiar and often contemptuous. Some times they give a definite force to the word as ghorawd, the horse. In the feminine they are much used to form diminutives.

The singulars of the personal pronouns have fallen into disuse. The plurals are used politely for the singulars, and new forms are made from these old plurals to make new plurals. The old singulars survive in poetry and in the speech of villagers, but even here the nominative has disappeared and new nominatives have been formed from the oblique bases. All the pronouns have numerous optional forms.

Conjugation in Maithili and Magahi.

It is in the con jugation of the verb that the amazing complexity of the Mth. and Mg. grammars appears. In all three dialects the verb makes little or no distinction of number, but instead there is a distinc tion between non-honorific and honorific forms. In Mth. and Mg. this distinction applies not only to the subject but also to the object, so that for each person there are, in the first place, four groups of forms, viz.:— I. Subject non-honorific, object non-honorific.

II. Subject honorific, object non-honorific.

III. Subject non-honorific, object honorific.Iii. Subject non-honorific, object honorific.

IV. Subject honorific, object honorific.

Forms in which the object is non-honorific may be, as in the case of nouns, short, long or redundant. There are numerous optional forms. Moreover, the feminine gender of the subject introduces new complications. These minutiae must be learnt from the regular grammars.

There are numerous irregular verbs. There is a long series of transitive verbs formed from intransitives and of causal verbs formed from transitives. Compound verbs are numerous.

The Bh. conjugation is simple. In the first and second persons the plural is generally employed for the singular, but there is no change in the verb corresponding to the person or honour of the object.

The termination of the present changes in sympathy with the old present to which it is attached. Irregular verbs, the formation of transitive and causal verbs, and the treatment of compound verbs, are on the same lines as in Mth.

Literature.

In all three dialects there are numerous f olk epics transmitted by word of mouth. The only dialect which has any real literature is Maithili. The earliest writer is Vidyapati Thakkura (Bidyapati Thakur), who lived at the court of Raja Siva Sirhha of Sugaona in Tirhut in the i 5th century. His fame rests chiefly on his dainty lyrics in Maithili dealing with the loves of Radha and Krishna. These have exercised an important influence on the religious history of eastern India. They were adopted and enthusiastically recited by the reformer Caitanya (r 6th century), and through him became the home-poetry of the Bengali-speaking Lower Provinces. Their language was trans formed (we can hardly say translated) into Bengali, and in that shape they have had numerous imitators. A collection of poems by the old Master-singer in their Maithili dress has been pub lished by Grierson in his Chrestomathy of that language. The most admired of Vidyapati's successors is Manbodh Jha, who died in 1788. He composed a Haribans, or poetical life of Krishna, which has great popularity. Many dramas have been composed in Mithila. The fashion is to write the body of the work in Sanskrit and Prakrit, but the songs in Maithili. Among modern writers in the dialect, we may mention Harsanatha, an elegant lyric poet and author of a drama, entitled U0,-harana, and Candra Jha, whose version of the Ramayana and translation of Vidyapati's Sanskrit Purusa-pariksd are deservedly popular.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The

Linguistic Survey of India, vol. v. part ii. Bibliography.-The Linguistic Survey of India, vol. v. part ii. (1903), gives a complete conspectus of Bihari in all its dialects and sub-dialects. See also G. A. Grierson, Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Sub-dialects of the Bihdri Language, parts i. to viii. (1883-87— these deal with every form of Bihari except standard Maithili) ; and S. H. Kellogg, A Grammar of the Hindi Language, in which are treated High Hindi . . . also the Colloquial Dialects of . . . Bhojpur, Magadha, Maithila, etc. (2nd ed., London, 1893).

For Maithili, see G. A. Grierson, An Introduction to the Maithili Language of North Bihar, containing a Grammar, Chrestomathy and Vocabulary; part i. Grammar (1881 ; znd ed., 19o9) ; part ii. Chrestomathy and Vocabulary (1882). For Vidyapati Thakkura, see J. Beames, "The Early Vaishnava Poets of Bengal," in Indian Anti quary, ii. (1873) , pp. 37 ff.; the same, "On the Age and Country of Vidyapati," ibid., iv. (1875) , pp. 299 ff. ; anon. article in the Banga Darsana, vol. iv., (1282 B.s.), pp. 75 ff.; Saradacarana Maitra, Intro duction to Vidyapatir Padeivali (1285 B.s.) ; G. A. Grierson, Chres tomathy, as above; "Vidyapati and his Contemporaries," Indian Antiquary, vol. xiv. (1885) , pp. 182 ff.; "On some Mediaeval Kings of Mithila," ibid., vol. xxviii. (1899) , pp. 57 ff. . A later and more com plete collection of Vidyapati's poems (but containing many that are of doubtful origin) is Vidydpati Thdkurer Padavali by Nagendranath Gupta (Calcutta, 1316 B.C.=A.D. 1909).

For Bhojpuri, see J. Beames, "Notes on the Bhojpuri Dialect of Hindi spoken in Western Bihar," in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. iii. n.s. 1868, pp. 483 ff.; A. F. R. Hoernle, A Grammar of the Eastern Hindi compared with the other Gaudian Languages (here "Eastern Hindi" means "Western Bhojpuri"), (London, 1880 ; J. R. Reid, Report on the Settlement Operations in the District of Azamgarh (Allahabad, 1880, contains, in appendices, full gram mar and vocabulary of Western Bhojpuri.

No special works have been written about Magahi.

the author of the Sat-sai, a collection of approximately 700 distichs, perhaps the most celebrated of Hindi poetry. The language is the form of Hindi called Braj-bhashd, the idiom of Mathura, the poet's home. Most of the verses are amorous utterances of Radha and her lover, Krishna. A couplet in the Sat-sai states that it was completed in A.D. 1662, although couplet 7o5 seems to refer to an event of the year 1665. It is said that Mirza Jai Singh, for whom the verses were composed, rewarded the poet with a gold piece (16 rupees) for every coup let. Little is known of the author beyond what he himself tells us. He was born in Gwalior, and later settled in Mathura. The collection very soon became celebrated, and its high position may be judged from the fact that 17 commentators have devoted their efforts to its full interpretation. Many different recensions exist, but the standard is that settled by an assembly of poets under the direction of Prince Alzam Shah, the third son of the emperor, Aurangzeb (1653-1707), and hence called the Atzam shahi; it comprises 726 couplets. The collection has also twice been translated into Sanskrit.

The best-known commentary is that of Lal1Q-ji-Lal, entitled the A critical edition of it has been published by Dr. G. A. Grierson (Calcutta, 1896).