The Maithili Script

Maithili is the traditional writing system for the Maithili language.

          It is spoken pre-dominantly in the state of Bihar in India and in the Narayani and Janakpur zones of Nepal by more than 35 million people. Maithili is a scheduled language of India and the second most spoken language in Nepal.

         Maithili is a Brahmi-based script derived from Gauḍī, or ‘Proto-Bengali’, which evolved from the Kuṭila branch of Brahmi by the 10th century. It is related to the Bengali, Newari, and Oriya, which are also descended from Gauḍī, and became differentiated from these scripts by the 14th century. It remained the dominant writing system for Maithili until the 20th century.

         The Maithili script is associated with a scholarly and scribal tradition that has produced literary and philosophical works in the Maithili and Sanskrit languages from at least the 14th century . The earliest records in the script are inscriptional records found on temples in Bihar and Nepal that are dated to the 13th century. The Maithil Brahmin community has used the script for maintaining pañjī (genealogical records) since the 14th century.

          Printing in Maithili began in the 1920s with the production of metal fonts in Calcutta. This continued until the 1950s, at which time Devanagari formally replaced the script.

          The Maithili script is still used for producing genealogical records, manuscripts of religious texts, personal correspondence, and printing books. It is also used in signage in north Bihar and is permitted as an optional script for writing the civil services examination in Bihar. 

            Users of Maithili have adapted the script for use in a range of technologies. Since the 1950s, the Maithili Akademi, Chetna Samiti, and other literary societies have been publishing literary, educational, and linguistic materials in the Maithili script using metal type and offset presses.

            Beginning in the 1990s, users adapted Maithili for use on computers through the creation of digitized typefaces. Today, there is substantial literary activity in Maithili in the digital medium, such as the production of books and periodicals using desktop publishing software. These are available in print and electronic forms.

         The hinderance to full use and support of Maithili in digital media is the absence of a Unicode standard for the script till 2015.  For this reason people adapted to use the language in devanagari script for routine activities such as writing e-mails, publishing blogs, and developing websites.

         The ‘Tirhuta’ script was standardised by Unicode in June 2015.  Since then there are only a few available digitised Maithili fonts, most of which often representing certain letters/symbols in handwritten style to complete the typeface.: http://www.maithilifonts.in/. Due to this reason even Google Maithili uses Devnagari script.

         The Government of India recognized Maithili as a scheduled language in 2004, a status that provides official support for the development of the language.

Source :- https://mithilakshar.wordpress.com/