विदेह

Gajendra Thakur

A PARALLEL HISTORY OF MAITHILI LITERATURE- PART 1

 

Issue No. 88 (November-December 2019) of Muse India at http://museindia.com/ displays Maithili literature in an extremely poor light. Moreover, it wrongly claims to be a representative review of Maithili Literature, whereas it was only in line with the Sahitya Akademi, Delhi; a mere representation of the so-called "dried main drain". It is expected that Muse India will correct itself by announcing an issue exclusively devoted to the parallel tradition of Maithili literature.

T.K. Oommen writes in the "Linguistic Diversity" Chapter of "Sociology", 1988, page 291, National Law School of India University/ Bar Council of India Trust book: "... the Maithili region is found to be economically and culturally dominated by Brahmins and if a separate Maithili State is formed, they may easily get entrenched as the political elite also. This may not be to the liking and advantage of several other castes, the traditionally entrenched or currently ascendant castes. Therefore, in all possibility the latter groups may oppose the formation of a separate Maithili state although they also belong to the Maithili speech community. This type of opposition adversely affects the development of several languages."

T.K. Oomen further writes: "... even when a language is pronounced to be distinct from Hindi, it may be treated as a dialect of Hindi. For example, both Grierson who undertook the classic linguistic survey of India and S. K. Chatterjee, the national professor of linguistics, stated that Maithili is a distinct language. But yet it is treated as a dialect of Hindi". (Ibid, page 293)

A PARALLEL HISTORY OF MAITHILI LITERATURE

I

PROTO-MAITHILI: BUDDHIST CHARYAPADAC. 8TH-12TH CENT

Mainstream view: Often overlooked or treated as pre-Maithili. 50 charyapadas (mystical songs) by 23 Siddha poets rarely integrated into standard literary surveys.

Parallel view: Foundational democratic-spiritual corpus. Poets include Luipada, Kanhapada, Bhusukupada, Saraha. 16 ragas, 47 surviving padas - direct ancestors of Maithili folk lyric. Adi-Kavi Era: Pre-Jyotirishwar Vidyapatic. 13th-early 14th cent. A central thesis of parallel history: the beloved Padavali poet Vidyapati is distinct from an earlier poet of the same name who composed in Sanskrit and Avahatta. The aadi kavi (first poet) in the democratic tradition pre-dates Jyotirishwar Thakur. Mainstream historiography conflates both. Jyotirishwar Thakur: Varnaratnakar, Maithili Dhurtasamagam. Court prose, encyclopaedic register.

Gangesh Upadhyaya (Parallel recovery): Gangesh Upadhyaya - author of Tattvachintamani. Videha's Panji research reveals he married a Charmkarini (leather-tanning caste woman) and was born 5 years after the death of his father. This fact was suppressed by Ramanath Jha. The honour-killing of his legacy is documented via original Dooshan Panji records.

CLASSICAL-MEDIEVAL: PADAVALI, NATAK & COURT POETRYC. 1350-1750

Establishment canon: Vidyapati Thakkurah (1350-1435) - Purusha Pariksha, Sanskrit & Avahatta. Brahmin-centred court culture. Govinddas (1600-1700) . Shankardev, Madhavdev - Ankiya Natak (one-act plays).

Parallel folk & Nepalese strand: Kabir (1398-1518) - Maithili padas of Kabir, recovered by Kamala Kant Bhandari and Subhadra Jha.  It has anti-caste spirituality. Nepal Malla kings' Maithili: Jagat Prakash Malla (Prabhavati Haran), Jagajyotir Malla (Hargauri Vivah). Mainstream historians wrongly call this era "Nepali". Harsnath Jha - Madhavananada Natak, Harshnath Kavyagrantthavali

COLONIAL PERIOD: SOCIAL REALISM & FAMINE LITERATUREC. 1830-1947

Mainstream / upper-caste tradition: Chanda Jha (1831-1907) - Mithila Bhasha Ramayana, religious poetry. Assisted Grierson's survey. G.A. Grierson (1851-1941) - Maithili Chrestomathy, grammar. Scientific codification, yet filtered through colonial lens. Munshi Raghunandan Das (1860-1945), Rasbiharis Lal Das (1872-1940).

Parallel agrarian & protest voices: Faturilal - Famine poetry of 1873-74 (Akali Kavitt), documenting the Famine in vivid Maithili verse. Unpublished until Grierson's Chrestomathy. A striking "from below" document of colonial misrule. Chanda Jha's own protest verses attacking the courts, corruption and the plight of the poor - routinely ignored in favour of his religious work.

Modernist Turn: Harimohan Jha & the Anti-Caste Novels 1908-1984. Harimohan Jha (1908-1984), the towering Maithili satirist and novelist - directly attacking caste orthodoxy and Brahmin hypocrisy - was systematically denied the Sahitya Akademi Award. The year 1967 went unrewarded rather than give it to him. His novel Kanyadan and works like Antika remain among the most widely read Maithili texts. Establishment parallel (same era)- First Sahitya Akademi Maithili award (1966) went to a philosophy academic text, not a literary work - setting the template for caste-based selection. Acharya Ramlochan Sharan (1889-1971) - Maithili Shri Ram Charit Manas.

Parallel scholarship recovers roots: Radhakrishna Chaudhary (1921-1985) - A Survey of Maithili Literature, Mithila ka Itihas. First comprehensive secular history. Jaykant Mishra (1922-2009) - A History of Maithili Literature (2 vols), Brihat Maithili Shabdakosh. Post-Independence: Rajkamal Chaudhary & the Avant-Garde1950s-1970s

Establishment view: Nagarjun / Yatri - credited by some with giving Maithili a new direction. Parallel history contests this: his Maithili corpus is thin (25+44 poems), he won Sahitya Akademi 1968 then stopped writing Maithili. Rajkamal Chaudhary himself called him "medieval".

Parallel radical modernity: Rajkamal Chaudhary - true avant-garde of Maithili. Monograph by Subhash Chandra Yadav (Nit Naval Rajkamal) recovers the suppressed radical Rajkamal. Somdev (1934-2022) - democratic voice recovered through Aanjur( Somdev Vishesh).

The Parallel Stage: Bechan Thakur & Dalit Theatre1970s-present; Videha identifies three writers as the true living masters of Maithili - all ignored by the Sahitya Akademi advisory board until 2021.
Jagdish Prasad Mandal - Maithili novelist (finally awarded Sahitya Akademi 2021 for Pangu). His novels document the oppression and resistance of lower-caste rural Mithila. Rajdeo Mandal - greatest living poet of Maithili. Bechan Thakur - greatest living Maithili dramatist. Created a parallel Maithili stage that confronts caste violence directly - a "slap" on existing slapstick Maithili theatre.

WOMEN'S WRITING: THE SUPPRESSED CANON18TH CENT.-PRESENT

Mainstream silence: Virtually absent from official anthologies. Women writers excluded from Sahitya Akademi assignments entirely. RTI data confirmed by Vinit Utpal (2011).

Parallel women tradition: Vibha Rani - playwright. Kamini Kamayani, Susmita Pathak - poetry and fiction. Arundhhati Devi - Mithilaak Vidushi Mahila (women scholars of Mithila). Premlata Mishra Prem, Panna Jha, Kalpana Jha, Munni Kamat and many others. First anthology of Maithili women poets: Ijoriyak Angaithi-Mor (ed. Mala Jha & Vibha Jha).

VIDEHA ERA: THE DIGITAL ERA 2000-PRESENT

Maithili's internet presence in 2000 (Yahoo Geocities), launching the blog Bhalsarik Gachh on 5 July 2004 (ISSN 2229-547X VIDEHA)- earliest Maithili presence online. Rechristened Videha from 1 January 2008, it became a fortnightly international e-journal . Key achievements of the parallel movement: Digital & archival; thousanda of Maithili books digitised; 11,000 palm-leaf Tirhuta manuscripts transcribed. Tirhuta Unicode proposal contributed to Unicode consortium. First Maithili website aggregator; first Maithili Braille site; first Tirhuta-script site online. Google Translate & Wikipedia Maithili localisation. Successfully opposed "Bihari Language" misclassification.

Parallel awards & institutions: Parallel Sahitya Akademi prizes and Kavi Sammelans. Videha Samman in literature, art, music, craft and drama. RTI expose (Vinit Utpal, 2011): 90%+ Sahitya Akademi assignments went to friends/relatives of 10-member advisory board. Zero assignments to authors of parallel tradition. 1000+ contributing authors; a million pages (hundred million words) of Maithili corpus created.

The mainstream Maithili literary historiography - as curated by the Sahitya Akademi since 1965 - has systematically promoted an upper-caste (predominantly Maithil Brahmin) canon while suppressing democratic, folk, Dalit, feminist, and Nepal-side traditions.

The history unfolds across nine layers: 1. Buddhist foundations - The 50 Charyapadas of 23 Siddha poets (Luipada, Kanhapada, Saraha and others) are treated as true roots of Maithili lyric, not a peripheral curiosity. 2. The two Vidyapatis - One of Videha's most significant scholarly interventions: the famous Padavali poet (pre-Jyotirishwar) is distinct from the Sanskrit/Avahatta writer Vidyapati Thakkurah (1350-1435). Conflating them distorts both. 3. The suppressed Gangesh - Original Panji (genealogical) manuscripts prove that philosopher Gangesh Upadhyaya, author of the Tattvachintamani, was born of an inter-caste union and his family was of cobbler-caste descent. Ramanath Jha concealed this from historian Dinesh Chandra Bhattacharya, and Sahitya Akademi's 2016 monograph on Gangesh perpetuated the suppression. 4. Colonial-era protest poetry - The famine verses of Faturilal (1873-74) document agrarian suffering in visceral detail and represent a "literature from below" that never entered the canon. 5. Harimohan Jha's exclusion - The satirist who most powerfully attacked Brahmin orthodoxy from within was denied the Sahitya Akademi award even when the year went unrewarded. 6. The living masters - Rajdeo Mandal, and Bechan Thakur are identified as the truly great contemporary voices, all long ignored by the official machinery. 7. The RTI expose - A Right to Information application by Vinit Utpal (2011) revealed that over 90% of Sahitya Akademi translation and publication assignments went to friends and relatives of the 10-member advisory board. 8. Nepal side - The Maithili of the Nepal Terai and the Malla-era literary output is treated as equally central, not as a regional footnote. 9. The digital counter-archive - Videha itself, with thousands of digitised books and 11,000 transcribed palm-leaf manuscripts, constitutes a living parallel institution.

 

 

 

II

It is structured as an alternative archive that challenges the "onslaught on dignity" perpetrated by government academies. The specific contents of the "A Parallel History of Maithili Literature" section include several key components:

1. Key points: The portal features a series of foundational texts and studies that redefine the Maithili canon of Parallel History of Maithili literature. The philosophical necessity of creating a history that represents the "ignored and non-represented" aspects of society. Rajdeo Mandal - Maithili Writer: A dedicated study of Rajdeo Mandal, a poet and novelist who represents the subaltern voice in modern Maithili fiction. 2. The "Vidyapati of Parallel Tradition": A central fixture of this is the reclaiming of the poet Vidyapati. The movement uses a logo based on a sketch by Panaklal Mandal (a Videha Samman recipient), which depicts a "subaltern Vidyapati". This version emphasizes that the poet's caste is historically uncertain and contests his appropriation by Brahmin-centric organizations that have "invested" him with elite caste status. 3. Archival Resistance: The Dooshan Panji: The Videha website hosts the "Dooshan Panji" (The Blackbook), a series of digitized genealogical records released in 2009. This archive is used to expose "secrets" that elite historians reportedly suppressed to maintain social hierarchies, such as the marriage of the philosopher Gangesh Upadhyaya to a woman from a lower caste (Charmkarini). 4. Digital and Linguistic Democratization: Maithili in English Translation: A repository of Maithili works translated into English to provide a "representative review" of Maithili literature to a global audience, bypassing the "leftover material" found in institutional anthologies.

Tirhuta Revitalization: The Videha site provides resources for Tirhuta (Mithilakshar), the original script of Maithili, which the movement views as essential for cultural sovereignty in the digital age. e-Learning: A portal for learning the Maithili language is integrated to foster a new generation of writers outside the traditional academic system. The movement asserts that this parallel approach is necessary because institutional recognition has historically "strengthened the hands of obscurantist elements" who have marginalized liberal and subaltern writers like Harimohan Jha.

 अपन मंतव्य editorial.staff.videha@zohomail.in पर पठाउ।