Mithilakshar
| Mithilakshar ( Devanagari मिथिलाक्षर mithilākṣar ; East Nagari : মিথিলাক্ষৰ) or Tirhuta (Devanagari: तिरहुता tirhutā ; East Nagari: তিৰহুতা) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Font | Abugida | |
| languages | Maithili | |
| Usage time | 15th to mid 20th century | |
Mithilakshar is the writing system traditionally used for Maithili , an Indo-European language spoken in the Indian state of Bihar and in eastern Nepal .
The language has a rich history that spans thousands of years, but years of official neglect by the Bihar government and migration have resulted in the Mithilakshar script being rarely used. Most speakers of the Maithili have switched to using the Devanagari , which is also used to write the neighboring, western, central Indian languages e.g. B. Hindi is used. As a result, the number of people with an acceptable knowledge of Mithilakshar has noticeably decreased in recent years.
description
Mithilakshar is similar to the closely related East Nagari script , which is used to write other East Indian languages to the east, e.g. B. the Bengali and the Assam .
Indeed, many letters (eg ক / k / , খ / kʰ / , দ / d̪ / , জ / dʒ / ) are spelled the same in both Mithilakshar and Eastern Nagari. However, there are enough differences between the two scriptures to prevent mutual understanding. For example, the letter representing the sound / r / in Mithilakshar has the same shape 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 connected letters and vowel signs mean different things in the two scripts. The conjunct ত্ত represents a geminated, voiceless, non-aspirated dental plosive / t̪ː / in the Eastern Nagari script, but the syllable / t̪u / in the Mithilakshar .
History and current status
The oldest pattern of Mithilakshar script is an inscription in the Shaivite temple in Tilkeshwarsthāna near Kusheshwarsthāna in the Darbhangā district of Bihar. The inscription mentions in the ancient Magadhi-Prakrit language that the temple on Kāttika sudi was built in Shake 125 (AD 203), which is the day following Diwali , a holiday that is when icons are installed is still considered very important in a temple. The writing of this inscription shows only very minor differences to the modern Mithilakshar.
Despite the almost universal switch from Mithilakshar script to Devanagari script to write Maithili, some traditional pundits still use the script to send ceremonial letters ( pātā ) to one another that have to do with important tasks such as marriage. Fonts for this typeface were designed in 2003. Efforts are currently being made to preserve the Mithilakshar script and develop it for use in digital media by encoding it in the Unicode standard, for which proposals have been submitted. In June 2014 the font was included in Unicode 7.0 as the Unicode block Tirhuta (U + 11480 – U + 114DF).
The inclusion of Maithili in the VIIIth Schedule of the Indian Constitution (2003), thus giving this language official recognition as a language independent of Hindi, therefore opens up the possibility that this will lead to a reintroduction of Mithilakshar on a larger basis, in accordance with similar developments in India promoting separate identities.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pandey, Anshuman. 2006. Request to Allocate the Maithili Script in the Unicode Roadmap ( Memento of the original from June 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.0 MB)
- ↑ Pandey, Anshuman. 2009. Towards an Encoding for the Maithili Script in ISO / IEC 10646 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Unicode 7.0.0. Unicode Consortium, June 16, 2014, accessed June 17, 2014 .
literature
- eCube: Solutions & Research. "Tirhuta Lipi: The Native Script of Maithilee." 2003 ( PDF )
- Salomon, Richard. Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages. Oxford University Press: New York, 1998.
- Script Encoding Initiative. "Unicode Scripts Research." April 12, 2006. ( [1] )