Talk:Tirhuta script

Simroungarh and Tirhuta

My inputs about Tirhuta script writings carved on stones found by Department of Archaeology in Simroungarh of Nepal has strangely been reverted by Jakichandan despite being fully cited. The research article about the carved stones in addition to the picture of the writings is available in this pdf Journal called "Ancient Nepal volume 135" published by Department of Archaeology in Nepal.Scyfie (talk) 19:31, 28 January 2018 (UTC)Scyfie

@Scyfie: I have replied on my talk page. Please keep the discussion at one place, it would be convenient. Thanks. Jakichandan (talk) 02:26, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

References

old

The first edition of this page was made by Siddhartha Jha, email: sidjha@yahoo.com. Feel free to email me with comments or questions and please contribute any improvements to this page. Thanks.

Please help us document the differences between the Mithilakshar script and the Bengali script.. This info is needed for the process of inclusion in Unicode.. GerardM (talk) 22:26, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Strange that the article does not mention the word Bengali! —Tamfang (talk) 08:01, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Preferred name for the script

This script is known as both Mithilakshar and Tirhuta. Is there more preference for one name over the other? This script should be registered with ISO 15924 (http://unicode.org/iso15924/). For this purpose, a preferred name should be established. Is Tirhuta the oldest name? Sarayuparin (talk) 23:56, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Move page to "Tirhuta"

I think this page should be moved to Tirhuta and the current redirect from Tirhuta should be moved to this page. The reason is that Tirhuta is the more traditional name for the script. Second, the script is being proposed for encoding in Unicode as 'TIrhuta'. Once Tirhuta is encoded in Unicode, it would make sense to use that name in reference to the script. Sarayuparin (talk) 03:45, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. The redirect at the requested destination had already been deleted.-- Hadal (talk) 21:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

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Mithilakshar → TirhutaTirhuta – Move from 'Mithilakshar' to 'Tirhuta' to align default name of script with the name ('Tirhuta') for the proposed Unicode block for the script. Currently, the 'Tirhuta' page is a redirect to 'Mithilakshar'. Sarayuparin (talk) 21:06, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Blacklisted Links Found on the Main Page

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External links section removed

==External links==
# [http://www.maithilifonts.in/ free Download Tirhuta (Maithili) Fonts]
# [http://www.tirhutalipi.4t.com/index.htm Tirhuta Lipi: Native Script of Maithili]
# [http://www.mithilaonline.com/mithilak.html Mithila Online]
# [https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=bWFpdGhpbGlsZWtoYWtzYW5naC5jb218bWFpdGhpbGlsZWtoYWtzYW5naHxneDphNzBjY2ZiMmVhMGE4ODU Learn Mithilakshara by [[Gajendra Thakur]]]

I've removed this entire section for the following reasons:

• The first link, advertising a font to download (which is what I wanted) goes to a blog. I navigated around it until I found a Google Docs link to download the font. After installing "tirhuta.ttf" I found it had Tirhuta characters mapped to the Basic Latin and Latin-1 Supplement blocks, in no particular order relative to the Unicode standard and nothing mapped to the Tirhuta block. As such it's not going to help anybody who installs it view the actual characters on the chart.
  • I suppose I could edit the font to move glyphs to the correct codepoints and produce a usable derivative font file—but that would involve squinting at fairly similar characters in an unfamiliar script, plus I have no clue about the license status.
• The second link seems to be an expired domain name.
• The third link is a page that's empty except for an error message "Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress." Subtracting "mithilak.html" from the url appears to show some kind of dating site at the root level of the domain.
• The fourth link is an empty gray Google Docs screen with the words "No preview available."

―cobaltcigs 22:40, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Earliest evidence and 7th-century timeline

@Glennznl I suggest discussing the dating of Tirhuta here rather than removing the early evidence through repeated reverts. The Adityasena inscriptions at Mandar Hill are dated to the 7th century. In A Survey of Maithili Literature (pp. 26–27), historian Radhakrishna Choudhary explicitly notes that these inscriptions show the first marked change in the north-eastern alphabet, from which the eastern variety developed by itself into the Maithili script. The terminology used for early eastern scripts needs to be considered carefully. Broad terms like “Gaudiya” were historically used by outside observers (like Al-Biruni) to describe the wider eastern script family. Choudhary notes on page 27 that some scholars call it Gaudiya script, indicating it is simply an alternative label for an evolving branch that already showed proto-Tirhuta traits. They should not be used to label 7th-century stones as variants of a standardized Gaudi script that didn't fully materialize until the 9th-century Pala era. The 14th century is important for the administrative standardization and extensive use of Tirhuta (like the Panji records), but a writing system complex enough to record massive family trees does not appear overnight. It requires centuries of development. The epigraphic record shows a continuous chain of evolution bridging this gap, including the 7th-century Mandar Hill inscriptions, the 10th-century Sahodara stone, and later records from Vaishali, Katra, Imadpur, Naulagarh, Bangaon, and Andhratharhi. These regional scripts are sister lineages branching out from the same Siddham base. I suggest restoring the timeline to "c. 7th century–present" based on these lithic records, while clearly distinguishing the script's early evolutionary roots from its 14th-century administrative standardization. DevGeekStar (talk) 15:10, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Sure. The source you are referring to, by Radhakrishna Choudhary, says "Early in the latter half of the seventh century A.D., we find a marked change in the northeastern alphabet, and the inscriptions of Adityasena exhibit this change for the first time and hence for ward the eastern variety develops by itself and becomes the Maithili script—a script which ultimately comes into use in Assam, Bengal, and Nepal. Some scholars call it Gaudiya script." From this piece of information, I really don't know how you conclude that it shows "proto-Tirhuta traits", and how calling it "Gaudiya" means that it has those "proto-Tirhuta traits". I know and I understand that pretty much all regions of India including Mithila, contain examples of ancient inscriptions and uninterrupted writing traditions. However, the clearly distinct writing systems that have survived until today, can be traced back to a certain era in time where those scripts started to be functionally or visually separate from their sister scripts, and from that point on became independent. For the Tirhuta script, sourced information states that this is the 14th century. What you are doing is giving undue weight to a single source, that also uses the name "Maithili script" for the "Gaudiya script" (but from context, "a script which ultimately comes into use in Assam, Bengal, and Nepal", being the Gaudi or Proto-BAMO script we know on Wikipedia) and then using this source to push back the time of origin of the Maithili script as far back as possible, even before its own sister scripts diverged from the Gaudi script. I don't really understand where the importance of "the oldest" and "the earliest" comes from with regards to Indian linguistics and epigraphy, but useful it is certainly not, as then we could just note "3rd century BCE" for all the scripts, since from then the Brahmi script was attested and local writing traditions have sustained until modern times. I acknowledge your point of the script's early evolutionary roots, but these belong to the stage of the Gaudi script or Siddham before that. An independent Maithili script can only be distinguished from the 14th century onwards, as sources tell us. Pinging @Chaipau @Msasag in case they have an opinion on this. Glennznl (talk) 23:27, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

@Glennznl: agreed. And 7th century is too early for a script used till today, there has been a lot of changes in forms. There are sources that use the term "proto-Maithili script" for example Prajñā-bhāratī (volume 6) that gives it 11-12th century (which align with what's called as "Gaudi", "proto-BAMO", "proto-Assamese", "proto-Oriya", "proto-Bengali", "Old Eastern" etc in other sources). There are also sources that use proto-Maithili for the 7th century inscription. We can distinguish the modern Maithili script from this proto stage. As for the page Gaudi script, which is used by some authors based on Al-Biruni, I propose that we should keep the alternative name "Proto-BAMO" visibly in the starting in bold font as it's an acronym that includes nearly all the terms "Proto-Bengali/Asssamese/Maithili/Odia" used in different sources for this script. Like we had agreed in the previous talk, if we find a neutral term used by more than one source, the article name should be changed. As Gaudi is a misleading term, refers to a rather small region unlike the vast extension of the script from Nepal to Odisha to Assam and is based on an 11th century historian who didn't even travel to the region to ask the locals what they call their script, didn't identify and confirm the forms that it's the script we're talking about, and used vague term "Eastern country" which can be interpreted as many things, as Bhattacharya rightfully argues. We should also mention that in the article. If any wiki policy (such as WP:DESCRIPTIVE) allows an umbrella term that includes all different terms and prefers that over a genuinely misleading term, like Gaudi (as per sources and concensus) then maybe we can change the article name ito proto-BAMO right now for accuracy and all the issues with the lack of representation (such as in this Maithili script article). Msasag (talk) 04:13, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

@Glennznl, @Msasag, I agree. "Gaudi script" is a misnomer, and Msasag's suggestion that we also provide the alternative name there - Proto-BAMO - is the way to go till a better names becomes available.

The current Trihuta script is a recent standardization - the proposals at Unicode makes that clear.

Chaipau (talk) 14:02, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

@Chaipau and Msasag: Sure, I have no problem with putting Proto-BAMO in the lead, but the article should retain the name "Gaudi script" for now, as Gaudi/Gaudiya gives way more search results than anything else on Google Scholar and Books. Glennznl (talk) 20:34, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

@Glennznl: That's fine for me. Putting Proto-BAMO in the lead and putting the issue regarding the term Gaudi script in more details as mentioned by Bhattacharya, in the naming section. Msasag (talk) 03:28, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

RK Choudhary explicitly says "Early in ‘the latter half of the seventh century A. D., we find a marked change in the north-eastern alphabet and the inscriptions of Adityasena exhibit this change for the first time and hence for ward the easternvariety develops by itself and becomes the ‘Maithili script—a script which ultimately comes into use in Assam, Bengal and Nepal."

Later he writes, Some scholars call it gaudiya script, he does not adopt that term himself; he merely notes their opinion.

Mithilakshar had come to its current shape by 10th Century AD. The oldest form of Mithilakshar is found in the Sahodara stone inscriptions of 950 AD. Afterwards, the scripts has been used throughout Mithila from Champaran to Deoghar. PIB Article

Maithili script comes into use in Assam, Bengal and Nepal. The term "Gaudi script" specifically refers to inscriptions originating in the Gauda region, not to the collective inscriptions of eastern India as a whole. What is the earliest inscription of the Gaudi script?

Vartula (or Vaivarta) is the name given to the rounded script that evolved after Kutila/Siddham, as documented by the Tibetan pilgrim Dharmasvamin and supported by epigraphists.

​@Msasag: Please look at how the infoboxes for Kannada, Tamil, Meitei, Malayalam, and Devanagari reflect their earliest historical periods. Even if the modern Tirhuta alphabet emerged later, the Tirhuta (Maithili) script has ancient roots, and the infobox timeline should reflect that full history.

@Glennznl: Please also align the infobox time periods across related Eastern Indic script articles, including the Bengali–Assamese script, Bengali alphabet, and Assamese alphabet pages. DevGeekStar (talk) 23:32, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

@DevGeekStar: They all need to be corrected. Msasag (talk) 11:44, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

@DevGeekStar: I see that you keep repeating your claim that the Maithili script dates to the seventh century A.D., based on a single source that uses the name "Maithili" as a synonym for "Gaudiya" script, as pointed out by the author himself. No other source ever treats Maithili script as the ancestor to the Bengali, Assamese and Odiya scripts, so I do not understand your insistence to do so, when your own cited source already names "Gaudiya" as a synonym to "Maithili", with regards to this ancestral script. Also, I fail to see how "Maithili" would be a better name than "Gaudi", since both are named after regions smaller than the region in which this "Old Eastern script" was found. Glennznl (talk) 16:12, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

No sources to back the history section

The history section claims that the inscriptions found on the Mandar parvat is historical tirhuta,but there is no reliable source cited,also historically also their has been no overlap as Mandar parvat lies in banka and was never a part of Mithila,let alone during the 7th century. This article is gross misuse of Wikipedia to propagate revisionist theories. 43lakhinder (talk) 15:36, 26 August 2026 (UTC)