The 'Magadhi language' (also known as 'मगही Magahi') is a language spoken by 17,449,446 people in
India. An earlier form of Magadhi, known as
Magadhi Prakrit, is believed to be the language spoken by
The Buddha, and the language of the ancient kingdom of
Magadha. Magadhi is closely related to
Bhojpuri and
Maithili and these languages are sometimes referred to as a single language, Bihari. These languages, together with several other related languages, are known as the
Bihari languages, which form a sub-group of the Eastern Zone group of
Indo-Aryan languages.
Magadhi has approximately 13 million speakers. It is spoken primarily spoken in the
Magadh area of
Bihar state. This area includes
Patna,
Gaya,
Aurangabad,
Jehanabad,
Nalanda, and other surrounding districts. It is also spoken in some areas of
Hazaribagh,
Giridih,
Palamau,
Munger, and
Bhagalpur, with some speakers in the Malda District of
West Bengal. It is generally written using
Devanagari script.
It was once mistakenly thought to be dialects of
Hindi, but has been more recently shown to be descendant of and very similar to
Eastern Group of
Indic languages, along with
Bengali,
Assamese, and
Oriya. It has a very rich and old tradition of folk songs and stories. It is spoken in 8 districts in Bihar, 3 in Jharkhand and has some speakers in Malda, West Bengal
External links
★
Magadhi at The Rosetta Project
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Jain Scriptures
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मगही-विकिपीडिया