Glimpses of Mithila & Maithili: The Correspondence of George Abraham Grierson

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Mithilesh Kumar Jha has recently worked on language politics with reference to Maithili. Power relations at regional level constitute the scope of his research plan. Currently he is engaged in teaching in the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.

For more than five decades, Mithila and Maithili, it seems, occupied virtually a prime space in the head and heart of George A. Grierson, a great linguist and lover of loka life and literature. Letters are a veritable source of history. His "Correspondence" has thus a significant value for at least situating the trends emerging before independence in different contexts of our socio-cultural life.

The copies of seventy letters preserved in "Darbhanga file (MSS EUR E223/231) of the "Grierson Papers" in the India Office Records (IOR), British Library, London, were obtained by Mithilesh Kumar Jha (Dept. of Political Science, University of Delhi). Besides, a copy of one letter was procured from the Maharajadhiraja Rameshwara Singh Regional Archive, Darbhanga. Thus, altogether, there are seventy one letters (from 1907 to 1937) included in the present volume. We (The members of the Board of Trustees of Maharajadhiraja Kameshwar Singh Kalyani Foundation) are deeply indebted to Mithilesh Kumar Jha, who compiled and edited all the letters quite systematically for publication in Kameshwar Singh Bihar Heritage Series.

Publishing old and rare documents/books, etc., for generating/regenerating virtually lost and forgotten treasures of knowledge regarding the socio-cultural and economic conditions of Bihar in Kameshwar Singh Bihar Heritage Series is our chief mission. We try our best to pursue this mission in order to serve the cause of our cultural tradition to the extent we afford.

We are grateful to Dr. Surendra Gopal, former Professor of History, Patna University, for his valuable suggestions. The proprietors of Vigyapan came forward and took the responsibility of printing the book. We are thankful to them.

While working at he British Library (London) during August September, 2012, I came across a file No. IOR MSS Eur E223/231, entitled 'Darbhanga' of 'Grierson Papers'. It contains the private correspondence of George A. Grierson. Soon, I informed Hetukar Jha about this file. He was quite pleased and encouraged me to obtain a photocopy of it. He expressed his willingness to publish it under Kameshwar Singh Bihar Heritage Series (Maharajadhiraja Kameshwar Singh Kalyani Foundation, Darbhanga).

George Abraham Grierson was one of the greatest philologists in the twentieth century. His Linguistic Survey of India is still widely used for the study oflanguages. Grierson's contribution to the growth and development of modern Maithili is well recognised. The letters of Grierson reflect his concern for the growth of Mithila, its culture and language, Maithili. When he came to this region as a Sub-divisional Magistrate of Madhubani and stayed here for a little over three years, he undertook the conscientious task of collecting Maithili songs and words. He took keen interest in the development of Maithili until the end of his life, as his correspondence reveals, even after leaving India. This engagement with Maithili led him to produce more and more philological works on the vernaculars of Bihar and other regions.

Before Grierson the language of the region was called Tirhutiya, Tirhutia, Tourutiana, Tirhut Bhasha by the colonial administrators. Colebrooke was first to describe it as a distinct dialect. Buchanan had classified it as the Des Bhasha of the Maithilas. It may be pointed out here that colonial masters were preoccupied with Hindi versus Urdu debate and took very little interest in the progress of other languages including Maithili. Along with this the imposition of Hindi through modern school education left very little prospect for the development of the local vernaculars. However, native scholars, though well aware of its existence, differed from each other in this context.