Magahi Language

The Magahi language (Devanagari: मगही; also known as Magadhi, मगधी) is a language spoken in India. Magadhi Prakrit was the ancestor of Magadhi, from which the latter's name derives. The ancestral language, 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 of Indo-Aryan languages. Magadhi has approximately 18 million speakers.

It was once mistakenly thought to be a dialect of Hindi, but has been more recently shown to be descendant of and very similar to the Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, along with Bengali, Assamese, and Oriya. It has a very rich and old tradition of folk songs and stories. It is spoken in eight districts in Bihar, three in Jharkhand, and has some speakers in Malda, West Bengal.

Though the number of speakers in Magadhi is large, it has not been constitutionally recognized in India. Even in Bihar, Hindi is the language used for educational and official matters (although Maithili, a related language also spoken widely in Bihar, is an official language under the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India). Magahi was legally absorbed under the subordinate label of Hindi in the 1961 Census. Such state and national politics are creating conditions for language endangerments.