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Part 1 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 1

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1. 0:00–0:07Imagine if tomorrow morning someone discovered a box of old, moldy letters in a basement in London.
2. 0:07–0:09Okay, color me intrigued.
3. 0:09–0:17Right. And these letters proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that William Shakespeare wasn't this wealthy, respectable English gentleman at all.
4. 0:17–0:18Oh wow.
5. 0:18–0:27Yeah. Imagine finding out he was actually like a lower-class street poet, someone entirely outside the elite circles,
6. 0:27–0:31and that the royal court had basically stolen his identity, scrubbed his background,
7. 0:31–0:33and repackaged him to make the empire look good.
8. 0:33–0:37I mean that would completely upend centuries of academic study.
9. 0:37–0:40People would absolutely lose their minds over that.
10. 0:40–0:43Right. The entire industry built around Shakespeare would collapse overnight.
11. 0:44–0:49Well what if I told you that exact kind of historical identity theft isn't just a hypothetical?
12. 0:49–0:50Wait, you're saying this actually happened?
13. 0:50–0:54It actually happened and it's just one tiny piece of a thousand-year
14. 0:54–0:59literary cover-up that we are digging into today. So welcome to the deep dive. We
15. 0:59–1:03are so glad you're here with us. We really are. Today we're looking at this massive
16. 1:03–1:08sprawling battle over, you know, who gets to write history, who gets to erase it,
17. 1:08–1:12and how people fight back. Yeah, and the battleground we are exploring today is
18. 1:12–1:16the history of the Mothili language and its literature. And I have to say, our
19. 1:16–1:22source material for this is just monumental. It's huge. It really is. We're
20. 1:22–1:26We're working with excerpts from this staggering undertaking called A Parallel History of
21. 1:26–1:28Mythla and Metheli Literature.
22. 1:28–1:32And this thing spans volumes one through one hundred.
23. 1:32–1:33A hundred of volumes?
24. 1:33–1:34That is wild.
25. 1:34–1:35Yeah.
26. 1:35–1:40It's an archive curated by Gugendra Thakur and a collective known as the Videha Parallel
27. 1:40–1:41Literary Movement.
28. 1:41–1:46Now, I know you, the listener, might be thinking, Matili, I'm not a linguist specializing
29. 1:46–1:48in South Asia, so why does this matter to me?
30. 1:48–1:49Which is a fair question.
31. 1:49–1:50Totally fair.
32. 1:50–1:54exactly what I thought when I first looked at this massive stack of sources.
33. 1:54–2:00But look, Mathilius has spoken by tens of millions of people across India and Nepal, but for
34. 2:00–2:07decades, its official history has been presented as this very pristine, elite, upper caste,
35. 2:07–2:09predominantly Brahminical tradition.
36. 2:09–2:12It's been sold as a language of courts and kings.
37. 2:12–2:17But this parallel history, these 100 volumes, they completely tear that narrative to shreds.
38. 2:17–2:18They really do.
39. 2:18–2:23Yeah, they reveal this suppressed history that is radical, subaltern, it crosses national
40. 2:23–2:28borders and it's now fueling a massive digital rebellion.
41. 2:28–2:29Which is fascinating.
42. 2:29–2:30It is.
43. 2:30–2:33But to answer that question of why you, the listener, should care, because this isn't
44. 2:33–2:35just a story about one language.
45. 2:35–2:41It is a terrifyingly clear masterclass in how institutional power constructs what we
46. 2:41–2:42just blindly accept as truth.
47. 2:42–2:43Yeah, exactly.
48. 2:43–2:48It shows us the literal mechanics of how marginalized voices can be systematically erased from
49. 2:48–2:53the record and crucially how those voices are using the internet right now to completely
50. 2:53–2:56bypass the traditional gatekeepers of culture.
51. 2:56–2:58It's essentially a blueprint for cultural survival.
52. 2:58–2:59Right.
53. 2:59–3:02So to understand how deep this goes we have to go back to the very beginning.
54. 3:02–3:05We're talking between the 8th and 12th centuries.
55. 3:05–3:06Let's do it.
56. 3:06–3:11When you read the official mainstream histories of Macyli they usually just gloss over
57. 3:11–3:14the earliest texts from this era.
58. 3:14–3:20like they treat them like some vague, archaic curiosity that belongs to a general ancient
59. 3:20–3:22past, not specifically to Methili.
60. 3:22–3:27Yeah, but the parallel history places these texts, which are called the chariopadas, absolutely
61. 3:27–3:28front and center.
62. 3:28–3:30So what are the chariopadas, exactly?
63. 3:30–3:32Well context is crucial here.
64. 3:32–3:36To understand the chariopadas, we first have to understand where the language even came
65. 3:36–3:37from.
66. 3:37–3:39So Mithili evolved from something called Magadi Precreate.
67. 3:39–3:41Okay, let's pause right there for a second.
68. 3:41–3:43What exactly is a precreate?
69. 3:43–3:46Are we talking about a dead language or something people actually spoke on the street?
70. 3:46–3:47Oh, definitely on the street.
71. 3:47–3:52Prakrits were the everyday vernacular languages of ancient India.
72. 3:52–3:57This is as opposed to Sanskrit, which was, you know, the highly formalized elite language
73. 3:57–3:58of religion and literature.
74. 3:58–3:59Oh, got it.
75. 3:59–4:02So Sanskrit is the High Court and Prakrit is the local tavern.
76. 4:02–4:03That's a good way to put it.
77. 4:03–4:08And Magadi Prakrit was the specific vernacular spoken in the eastern part of the subcontinent.
78. 4:08–4:12It was actually the language of the ancient Malaya Empire.
79. 4:12–4:15So think of historical figures like the Emperor Ashoka.
80. 4:15–4:16Okay, wow.
81. 4:16–4:17That's old.
82. 4:17–4:18Very old.
83. 4:18–4:20So from that ancient root over centuries,
84. 4:20–4:23regional languages began to branch off.
85. 4:23–4:25And the Charipadas are where we see
86. 4:25–4:27the very first distinct sparks
87. 4:27–4:30of what would eventually become monthly.
88. 4:30–4:31And what's wild is that these texts
89. 4:31–4:35aren't royal decrees or like dry historical ledgers.
90. 4:35–4:38They are 50 mystical songs composed
91. 4:38–4:40by 23 different poets.
92. 4:40–4:41And our sources say these poets
93. 4:41–4:45where Vajrayana Sita, which sounds incredibly profound,
94. 4:45–4:46but what does that actually mean?
95. 4:46–4:47Yeah, it does sound intense.
96. 4:47–4:50Vajrayana is a form of tantric Buddhism,
97. 4:50–4:53and a Sita is essentially a realized master or a mystic.
98. 4:53–4:55We actually have names for these figures from the texts,
99. 4:55–4:57Luipada, Kanapada, Saraha.
100. 4:57–4:59Okay, so they were monks.
101. 4:59–5:01Yes, but what's really important here
102. 5:01–5:03is who they were in the social hierarchy.
103. 5:03–5:05Because they were not court intellectuals
104. 5:05–5:07living in luxury, they often came
105. 5:07–5:10from the very lowest strata of society.
106. 5:10–5:12We're talking about sweepers, arrow makers, cowherds.
107. 5:12–5:15Oh wow, so these are really working class mystics.
108. 5:15–5:19Exactly, they were roaming nonsectarian monks
109. 5:19–5:23and their choice of language was a deliberate act of defiance.
110. 5:23–5:24They did not write in Sanskrit,
111. 5:24–5:26which as we mentioned was the gate kept language
112. 5:26–5:29of the educated upper castes.
113. 5:29–5:32Instead they wrote in a style called Sandhya Vasha
114. 5:32–5:34which translates to Twilight language.
115. 5:34–5:36I love that term so much, Twilight language.
116. 5:36–5:38It sounds like something straight out of a Tolkien novel.
117. 5:38–5:41How did Twilight Language actually work in practice?
118. 5:41–5:42It worked as a code.
119. 5:42–5:46It was a language that operated on multiple levels simultaneously.
120. 5:46–5:52So on the surface, a song might seem to be about a completely mundane activity, like
121. 5:52–5:54a brewing liquor or hunting.
122. 5:54–5:59But the Twilight Language used paradoxes and esoteric metaphors to provide instructions
123. 5:59–6:03for their secret heterodox spiritual practices.
124. 6:03–6:06It was designed to be understood only by the initiated,
125. 6:06–6:08while flying completely under the radar
126. 6:08–6:11of the Orthodox religious authorities.
127. 6:11–6:12Okay, but let me push back on this a bit.
128. 6:12–6:15Were they actually trying to start
129. 6:15–6:17some sort of social revolution,
130. 6:17–6:20or were they just writing in a coded local language
131. 6:20–6:21because it was practical?
132. 6:21–6:23Like maybe that's just the only language
133. 6:23–6:25their followers actually understood.
134. 6:25–6:25That's a great question.
135. 6:25–6:27And the parallel history argues
136. 6:27–6:29that it was absolutely both.
137. 6:29–6:31You really can't separate the spiritual
138. 6:31–6:32from the social here.
139. 6:32–6:32Interesting.
140. 6:32–6:38By explicitly choosing to write in what was called Decileviana, which means the language of the people,
141. 6:38–6:44they were actively rejecting the sedentary, cast-bound, orthodox discourse of their time.
142. 6:44–6:46So it was a conscious rebellion.
143. 6:46–6:51Completely. They were basically saying, we don't need your elite Sanskrit to achieve enlightenment.
144. 6:51–6:54And we don't need it to express complex philosophical thought, either.
145. 6:54–6:58So they were bypassing the institutional gatekeepers of the 9th century.
146. 6:58–7:05Exactly. Scholars in the parallel tradition like Rahul Sankrition have rigorously analyzed
147. 7:05–7:10these occult songs. And they've demonstrated how their linguistic structure, what linguists
148. 7:10–7:15call morphology, matches protomythally. They are the undeniable roots of the language.
149. 7:15–7:18But the mainstream narrative waters this all down, right?
150. 7:18–7:25Oh, absolutely. By treating the Charriapadas as just this shared, generic, eastern heritage,
151. 7:25–7:31The mainstream history neatly avoids acknowledging the radical, anti-cast, subaltern origins of
152. 7:31–7:32the language itself.
153. 7:32–7:38It's like discovering that a highly formalized, classically trained symphony orchestra actually
154. 7:38–7:42traces its roots back to an underground punk rock movement.
155. 7:42–7:44And the directors of the symphony are just deeply embarrassed by it.
156. 7:44–7:47They want everyone to think they've always been wearing tuxedos.
157. 7:47–7:48There's a very vivid way to frame it.
158. 7:48–7:52The parallel tradition, on the other hand, embraces the punk rock roots.
159. 7:52–7:56view these mystic monks as the original subaltern resistance.
160. 7:56–7:58Which raises the million dollar question for me.
161. 7:58–8:03If the language started out in the dirt, on the roads, as this democratic tool of working
162. 8:03–8:08class mystics, how did it become so intensely restricted later on?
163. 8:08–8:09Right.
164. 8:09–8:13I mean how do you go from twilight language to a pristine elite museum exhibit?
165. 8:13–8:16Well, that requires tools of control.
166. 8:16–8:19And looking at the sources, there are a few tools more effective for controlling
167. 8:19–8:23a culture than the literal scripts they write with and the ledgers they use to track their
168. 8:23–8:24people.
169. 8:24–8:25So true.
170. 8:25–8:29The history of a language's alphabet is rarely just about linguistics, right?
171. 8:29–8:30Yeah.
172. 8:30–8:31It's almost always about political autonomy.
173. 8:31–8:32Yeah.
174. 8:32–8:36For nearly a thousand years, Melideal wasn't written in the script most people associate
175. 8:36–8:38with Hindi today.
176. 8:38–8:43It had its own distinct ancient script called Terhuta, or sometimes Mithlaksura.
177. 8:43–8:44Right.
178. 8:44–8:47And the sources mention the script evolved from the ancient Brahmi script way back
179. 8:47–8:48in the seventh century.
180. 8:48–8:52We even have physical proof of it, like the Mendar Hill stone inscriptions.
181. 8:52–8:53Exactly.
182. 8:53–8:55But Teruda wasn't just a basic alphabet.
183. 8:55–8:59The sources say it was heavily associated with Tantric-Yantra motifs.
184. 8:59–9:00What does that mean?
185. 9:00–9:04Well, a Yantra in Tantric traditions is a mystical diagram.
186. 9:04–9:09It's often composed of intersecting geometric shapes, and it's used as an aid in meditation
187. 9:09–9:10or ritual.
188. 9:10–9:11Okay.
189. 9:11–9:16The Tehuda script was highly ornamental, and its curves and lines actually reflected
190. 9:16–9:18some of this sacred geometry.
191. 9:18–9:22But it wasn't just functional, it carried the spiritual and aesthetic weight of the culture.
192. 9:22–9:28It was a mature, sophisticated script used for everything from academic treatises to
193. 9:28–9:29everyday correspondence.
194. 9:29–9:33But over the last hundred years, Trujuta was essentially pushed off a cliff.
195. 9:33–9:36It was systematically marginalized.
196. 9:36–9:39First it lost ground to a script called Kythi.
197. 9:39–9:40What was Kythi used for?
198. 9:40–9:42Kythi was a more functional cursive script.
199. 9:42–9:46It was used primarily by the Kyosthik community, who were the traditional record keepers
200. 9:46–9:51and administrators. They used it for bookkeeping, land records and legal documents.
201. 9:51–9:56Oh, okay. So the administrative necessity started superseding the cultural aesthetic.
202. 9:56–10:02Yes, exactly. But the fatal blow really came the 20th century with the wholesale institutional
203. 10:02–10:03adoption of Devan Agari.
204. 10:03–10:11Devan Agari being the script used for Sanskrit and modern Hindi. Now, the official justification
205. 10:11–10:15for this switch always sounds so reasonable, right? Like, they say, oh, we have printing
206. 10:15–10:19presses that are already set up for Dave Nagari. It's just easier for the colonial administration.
207. 10:19–10:23It's more efficient. Yeah, but efficiency is the classic Trojan horse for assimilation.
208. 10:23–10:29Ooh, that's a good quote. The parallel history emphasizes that this switch was a deliberate
209. 10:29–10:35mechanism of dialectization. Let's break that down because dialectization sounds very academic.
210. 10:35–10:40Is that just when people start treating a language as less important? It's a bit more insidious
211. 10:40–10:45than that. Think of it this way. Imagine a historic building covered in a vibrant, unique,
212. 10:45–10:52thousand-year-old mural. Dialectization is when a new landlord comes in and paints the entire building
213. 10:52–10:58with a standard beige institutional paint. Oh wow. Right. And once it's beige, the landlord can point
214. 10:58–11:02to it and say, see, it looks exactly like all the other beige buildings on the block. It's
215. 11:02–11:06nothing special. It's just a minor variation of the main property. Okay, that makes total
216. 11:06–11:11sense. So by forcing Mathili to be written in the Hindi script, it became visually
217. 11:11–11:17indistinguishable to outsiders. Exactly. It allowed colonial officials and later the Indian
218. 11:17–11:24state governments to just easily classify Mathili as merely a rugged regional dialect of Hindi,
219. 11:24–11:28rather than acknowledging it as an independent language with a millennium of distinct literary
220. 11:28–11:34history. Precisely. You strip away the visual identity and you instantly weaken the claim
221. 11:34–11:39to political and cultural autonomy. But as you mentioned, the script was really only the first
222. 11:39–11:44tool of control. The sources dive deeply into a social mechanism called the Panjhi Proband.
223. 11:44–11:48Yes, the Panjhi system. When I first read about this in the sources, I was actually quite impressed.
224. 11:48–11:52It was established around the 14th century and it was this incredibly sophisticated,
225. 11:52–11:56massive system of genealogical record keeping for Mithal Brahmins and Khyastas.
226. 11:57–12:02And if you read the mainstream historians like Mahamohapatiya, Parmesh Warchaw,
227. 12:02–12:05They tout this as the crowning lorry of their culture.
228. 12:05–12:10And if you look at it purely as an archival feat, it is astonishing. I mean, they maintain
229. 12:10–12:16vast intricate databases of lineages, marriages, and ancestral movements across centuries.
230. 12:16–12:21And they did all of this without computers. Right. But here's where I need you to explain the
231. 12:21–12:26patch. Because on paper, meticulous historical record keeping sounds fantastic. I mean, we're
232. 12:26–12:30doing a deep dive on history right now. We obviously love archives. We do.
233. 12:30–12:35So why does the parallel movement despise the Pongee system so intensely?
234. 12:35–12:38Like, what is the danger in knowing your family tree?
235. 12:38–12:41Well, the danger is in how that data is used.
236. 12:41–12:47The parallel movement denounces the Pongee system because it wasn't a benign historical society.
237. 12:47–12:49It was a vicious instrument of social engineering.
238. 12:49–12:51How so? Like, practically speaking.
239. 12:51–12:55It functioned almost like a draconian credit score for human value and purity.
240. 12:55–13:01The records were used to enforce an incredibly strict system of Berminical patriarchy.
241. 13:01–13:01Okay.
242. 13:01–13:05You couldn't just marry who you wanted. Your lineages had to be checked against the
243. 13:05–13:10Pange to ensure absolute caste purity and to avoid prohibited degrees of
244. 13:10–13:11consanguinity.
245. 13:11–13:11Wow.
246. 13:11–13:16Yeah. And if the registrars, the Pangea Charis, found a flaw in your lineage,
247. 13:16–13:20your family could be instantly downgraded or completely ostracized.
248. 13:20–13:26It dictated who controlled wealth, who could own land, and who was socially invisible.
249. 13:26–13:31So it was less of a family tree and more of a weapon to maintain a very exclusive club.
250. 13:31–13:33Precisely.
251. 13:33–13:37But the Vidae Hill movement didn't just complain about this system in abstract terms.
252. 13:37–13:44In 2009, they executed what I can only describe as a massive historical leak.
253. 13:44–13:47They digitized and published something called the Dushan Pangee.
254. 13:47–13:48The Black Book.
255. 13:48–13:49The Black Book.
256. 13:49–13:53These were the secret suppressed files of the genealogical records.
257. 13:53–13:55It's literally like a cultural WikiLeaks.
258. 13:55–13:57So what did the black book actually show?
259. 13:57–14:01It proved that the elite historians had been blatantly falsifying their own pristine records
260. 14:01–14:04to cover up impurities among their most revered figures.
261. 14:04–14:05Unbelievable.
262. 14:05–14:08And the most shocking example in the sources is the case of Gangesh Upadaya.
263. 14:08–14:09Right.
264. 14:09–14:12Let's talk about Gangesh, because this ties back to that idea of historical identity
265. 14:12–14:14theft I brought up at the start.
266. 14:14–14:16How big of a deal was this guy?
267. 14:16–14:17He was a Titan.
268. 14:17–14:21He lived in the 12th century and wrote a text called the Tupikintamani.
269. 14:21–14:24He essentially founded the Navinaya school.
270. 14:24–14:28Which means what exactly for those of us who aren't philosophy majors?
271. 14:28–14:29Sure.
272. 14:29–14:30Navinaya translates to new logic.
273. 14:30–14:35It was a revolutionary system of logic and epistemology that deeply influenced Indian
274. 14:35–14:38philosophy for centuries.
275. 14:38–14:42Being the founder of Navinaya is akin to being the Isaac Newton of Indian philosophical
276. 14:42–14:43logic.
277. 14:43–14:46He's an absolute superstar of the intellect.
278. 14:46–14:52So you have the superstar and the orthodox upper caste establishment claims him as their ultimate poster boy
279. 14:52–14:55He's their proof of intellectual and cultural superiority
280. 14:55–14:58But the douche in Ponji the black book
281. 14:58–15:04Revealed a reality that terrified the orthodox establishment the records showed that gang of Shubhity
282. 15:04–15:09I had actually married a charm Karini a woman from the lower leather tanning cast
283. 15:09–15:16Yes, a union that defied every single rigid rule the Ponji system was built to enforce and the records also contain an entry
284. 15:16–15:19indicating that his family was born five years after his father's death.
285. 15:19–15:24Okay, wow. So his personal life, his marriage, his family origins,
286. 15:24–15:30they completely shattered the myth of the pure orthodox, rule-abiding, Ramana scholar.
287. 15:30–15:34Completely. And here is where the institutional cover-up comes in.
288. 15:34–15:39The sources detail how a very prominent elite historian named Ramanath Shah,
289. 15:39–15:44who was a massive power broker in the Sahita Academy, which is India's National Academy of Letters,
290. 15:44–15:48he actively suppressed these specific Ponji records.
291. 15:48–15:49Wait, really?
292. 15:49–15:51He knew they existed, but he buried them.
293. 15:51–15:52I have to stop you there.
294. 15:52–15:53Why?
295. 15:53–15:57I mean, I understand prejudice, but from a purely historical standpoint, why would
296. 15:57–16:02a scholar actively destroy the true biography of the man they're supposed to be celebrating?
297. 16:02–16:06Because the institution's legitimacy depended on the illusion of unbroken purity.
298. 16:06–16:11If their greatest philosopher was mingling across strict caste lines, the entire justification
299. 16:11–16:13for the Ponji system.
300. 16:13–16:17idea that strict caste separation is necessary for intellectual and spiritual greatness just
301. 16:17–16:21falls apart. Wow. So as the parallel history terms it, they committed an honor killing of
302. 16:21–16:26his legacy. They erased his wife. They erased his actual lived reality. I mean, the sources
303. 16:26–16:31point out that even as late as 2016, the Sahiti Academy was still publishing monographs
304. 16:31–16:36about him that perpetuated the sanitized fake biography. That is the raw power of
305. 16:36–16:41institutional gatekeeping. You take the man's genius, but you execute his true identity
306. 16:41–16:43so it serves your political narrative.
307. 16:43–16:47And you know, if the establishment was willing to erase the wife of their greatest philosopher
308. 16:47–16:52just to keep his cast pure, it really makes you wonder what they did to their artists.
309. 16:52–16:56Which brings us to the Shakespeare level bombshell I mentioned at the start of the show.
310. 16:56–16:58The identity theft of Vidyapatti.
311. 16:58–16:59Yeah.
312. 16:59–17:03Vidyapatti Thakur is the undisputed son around which Massili literature orbits.
313. 17:03–17:06He lived from roughly 1360 to 1450.
314. 17:06–17:12Even to the mainstream institutional scholars, he is known as the Abhinava Jayadeva, the new
315. 17:12–17:13Jayadeva.
316. 17:13–17:18So the official history paints him as this highly refined, deeply devout Brahmin courtier.
317. 17:18–17:19He's a polymath, right?
318. 17:19–17:24They say he wrote dense treatises in Sanskrit and also in something called Abhahada.
319. 17:24–17:25What is Abhahada?
320. 17:25–17:29Abhahada is a really fascinating linguistic stage.
321. 17:29–17:34It was a transitional literary language that basically bridged the gap between the older
322. 17:34–17:39upper-brunch languages and the early modern eastern languages like Mithili, Bengali and
323. 17:39–17:40Asamese.
324. 17:40–17:44So he's writing in Sanskrit, he's writing in Abhahada, but what he's really famous
325. 17:44–17:48for, the works that actually made him immortal, are his Padavali.
326. 17:48–17:49Yes.
327. 17:49–17:54These are the incredibly beautiful musical songs about the divine love of Radha and
328. 17:54–17:58Krishna, and these were written in the local vernacular, in Mithili.
329. 17:58–18:04And the mainstream narrative claims that this single elite Brahmin genius graciously lowered
330. 18:04–18:09himself to write in the vernacular and by doing so he elevated the local dialect to high
331. 18:09–18:10art.
332. 18:10–18:13But the Vedea movement drops an absolute hammer on this narrative.
333. 18:13–18:18They argued that the official history has deliberately taken two entirely different people and
334. 18:18–18:21smashed them together into one mythological figure.
335. 18:21–18:25This is one of the most contentious and significant interventions by the parallel historians.
336. 18:25–18:26Oh that.
337. 18:26–18:30it that the famous Padavali poet, the person who wrote those beloved,
338. 18:30–18:34racy, crisp, mathilly love songs that the common people actually memorized
339. 18:34–18:39and sang in the fields, is entirely distinct from the Sanskrit and
340. 18:39–18:42Avahara court writer named Vidyapati Thakura, who actually lives later.
341. 18:43–18:44Let me make sure I'm wrapping my head around this.
342. 18:45–18:50They are saying there's an elite Sanskrit writing court bureaucrat named Vidyati.
343. 18:50–18:55And then there's an earlier populist poet who wrote the massive folk anthems,
344. 18:55–18:57who was also named Vizipati.
345. 18:57–18:58And the historians just decided,
346. 18:58–19:00hey, let's pretend the rich courtier
347. 19:00–19:02wrote all the popular folk songs too.
348. 19:02–19:04That is exactly their assertion.
349. 19:04–19:06The parallel narrative critiques mainstream historians
350. 19:06–19:08were deliberately fusing them.
351. 19:08–19:10And the motive is clear, right?
352. 19:10–19:12If you admit the greatest poetry in your language
353. 19:12–19:14was written by an unknown,
354. 19:14–19:16possibly lower caste vernacular poet,
355. 19:16–19:19the Orthodox court loses its cultural supremacy.
356. 19:19–19:20Oh wow.
357. 19:20–19:22By claiming the two Vizipatis are one person,
358. 19:22–19:28The brahminical establishment successfully appropriates the vernacular genius and claims it as their own property.
359. 19:28–19:31It is literal historical identity theft.
360. 19:31–19:36They took a populist icon and dressed him up in elite caste-assist attire.
361. 19:36–19:39And the Vedeja movement pushes back against his visually, don't they?
362. 19:39–19:40They do.
363. 19:40–19:43Their e-journal logo is a sketch by the artist Panaclaumandl,
364. 19:43–19:46and it depicts what they call a subaltern vidyapati.
365. 19:46–19:47Yes.
366. 19:47–19:52They acknowledged that the true Pottavale poet's specific cast is historically uncertain,
367. 19:52–19:56but they fiercely contest his appropriation by the elite.
368. 19:56–20:03The true vidyapati of the parallel tradition made a conscious choice to write in Diziluviana the language of the people.
369. 20:03–20:03Right.
370. 20:03–20:08His poetry was direct, it was filled with imagery of contemporary village life,
371. 20:08–20:12and it resonated so deeply that his lines literally passed into common speech.
372. 20:12–20:17And here's the thing about truly great resonant art, you know, you just can't keep it in a box.
373. 20:18–20:23Even as the elite historians tried to sanitize him and lock him up in the court, his vernacular songs
374. 20:23–20:28sprouted wings. They didn't just stay in Mothila. They sparked a massive transnational cultural
375. 20:28–20:32explosion that the parallel history calls the Great Diaspora, which is such an important
376. 20:32–20:38era. We often suffer from a modern bias where we assume regional languages are strictly
377. 20:38–20:42confined to their current geographical borders. Yeah, we totally do. But the sources
378. 20:42–20:47frame Mathilli not as a localized dialect, but as the Latin of Eastern India.
379. 20:47–20:49It was a donor civilization.
380. 20:49–20:52It profoundly shaped the literature of its neighbors.
381. 20:52–20:56We're talking Nepal, Bengal, Assam, and Orissa.
382. 20:56–21:00Let's look at Nepal first because this feels like a massive blind spot in standard history.
383. 21:00–21:06In the medieval period, the ruling dynasty in Massila, the Oynwars, starts facing conquests.
384. 21:06–21:08Things get very dangerous.
385. 21:08–21:09Where do the scholars and artists go?
386. 21:09–21:12They flee north, up into the Himalayas.
387. 21:12–21:16They saw it sanctuary in the Nepal Valley, specifically under the Malola Kings.
388. 21:16–21:19And what happened there is just remarkable.
389. 21:19–21:24Under rulers like Jagatjur-Tirmala and later Bhupatindramala, Mathilli didn't just survive
390. 21:24–21:27as a refugee language, it actually became the language of the court.
391. 21:27–21:33I mean, the sources mention that Bhupatindramala alone composed 26 plays in Mathilli.
392. 21:33–21:34Yes.
393. 21:34–21:41For roughly 150 years, Mathilli drama essentially replaced Sanskrit drama in the high courts
394. 21:41–21:42of Nepal.
395. 21:42–21:45this golden age of transporter literature.
396. 21:45–21:49But if you read modern official histories today, how do they categorize all this Mala
397. 21:49–21:51era literature?
398. 21:51–21:55They frequently label it simply as Nepali heritage, which effectively erases the Mathili
399. 21:55–21:57roots.
400. 21:57–22:02The parallel historians are trying to reclaim this era as a shared, classical age of newer
401. 22:02–22:07Mathili civilization that operated all along the India-Tibet trade rest.
402. 22:07–22:11Okay, so Nepal adopts it, but the story in Bengal is even wilder.
403. 22:11–22:12It really is.
404. 22:12–22:14In Bengal, they didn't just adopt Mithili.
405. 22:14–22:19The Bengali singers and poets became so obsessed with Vigipati's love songs that they actually
406. 22:19–22:22invented a fake hybrid language just so they could sound more like him.
407. 22:22–22:25It is an unparalleled phenomenon in literary history.
408. 22:25–22:27It's known as Brajabuli.
409. 22:27–22:29Explain how this actually works, like linguistically.
410. 22:29–22:34Well, many Bengali Vaishnava singers who were devotees of Krishna had traveled to study
411. 22:34–22:35in Mithila.
412. 22:35–22:40They were so captivated by the rhythm, the emotional depth, and the specific cadence
413. 22:40–22:46of Vigipati's Methili Padavali that they wanted to compose their own devotional songs in the exact same
414. 22:46–22:50style. Okay. But they didn't write them in pure Bengali, nor did they write in pure Methili.
415. 22:50–22:56They created an artificial literary language. It was a mix of Bengali vocabulary heavily modified
416. 22:56–23:01with Methili grammar and phonetic structures. So they formed a massive linguistic cover band
417. 23:01–23:07of Vigipati. A profoundly successful one too. Brajibhuli wasn't just a fleeting trend,
418. 23:07–23:12It became the primary vehicle for the entire medieval Bengali-Vaishnaval lyric movement.
419. 23:12–23:17Absolute giants of Bengali literature wrote their masterpieces in this mongrel language.
420. 23:17–23:22And this obsession lasted for centuries. I have to bring up the Tagore anecdote from the sources
421. 23:22–23:26because it is just too perfect. Oh, it's brilliant. We're talking about the late 19th century,
422. 23:26–23:32Rabindranath Tagore, who would eventually become the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize
423. 23:32–23:38in literature. He's young, he's ambitious, and the cultural clout of this mathilly-based
424. 23:38–23:42Brajabuli is still so strong that he decides he wants in on it.
425. 23:42–23:48Yes, Tagore composed a series of exquisite lyrics in Brajabuli. But rather than publishing them
426. 23:48–23:54under his own name as Modern Pastiches, he orchestrated a literal literary hoax.
427. 23:54–23:55Wait, really?
428. 23:55–23:59Yeah, he claimed he had discovered the lost manuscripts of an ancient medieval poet
429. 23:59–24:04named Banu Singha. And he published his own poems as the Banu Singha Thakur Padavali.
430. 24:04–24:07He just faked it entirely. And did people believe him?
431. 24:07–24:13Oh, the Bengali literary elite completely bought it at first. They praised these ancient texts.
432. 24:13–24:17Entirely unaware they were actually written by a teenager in the 1870s.
433. 24:17–24:18That is hilarious.
434. 24:18–24:21It really just demonstrates how deeply the aesthetic of Mathili had penetrated the
435. 24:21–24:22intellectual psyche of eastern India.
436. 24:22–24:26And it wasn't just Bengal. The sources show a parallel development in a psalm,
437. 24:26–24:27known as Brajavali.
438. 24:27–24:34Yes. Driven by Sramanta Sankara Deva in the late 15th century, Sankara Deva was a massive cultural
439. 24:34–24:39and religious figure in Assam. He traveled extensively through Mithila and was deeply inspired
440. 24:39–24:44by the Mithili-Kirtania drama traditions. To write his famous Aiki and At plays,
441. 24:44–24:48he created his own hybrid language, mixing Mithili with Asimis.
442. 24:48–24:54It is just staggering. Mithili was a sprawling trans-regional superpower.
443. 24:54–24:58It was the lingua franca of eastern Indian devotionalism.
444. 24:58–25:02So how does a language that shapes entire neighboring cultures that influences future
445. 25:02–25:05Nobel laureates end up fighting for its own life?
446. 25:05–25:06It's a steedfall.
447. 25:06–25:10It really is. How does it go from a donor civilization to a language struggling for
448. 25:10–25:14basic recognition in its own homeland by the 20th century?
449. 25:14–25:17Well that tragic art brings us to the intersection of colonialism, class bias,
450. 25:17–25:20and the rise of modern institutional hegemony.
451. 25:20–25:23To understand the decline we have to look at the 19th century and the arrival of the
452. 25:23–25:29British colonial administration, specifically an Irish civil servant and linguist named George Abraham
453. 25:29–25:34Gerrison. Gerrison seems like a very complicated figure in this narrative. On one hand, the sources
454. 25:34–25:39give him a lot of credit. He essentially throws Maithili a lifeline when it was drowning in Hindi
455. 25:39–25:45assimilation. He did. In 1881, Gerrison published a systematic grammar of Maithili and later
456. 25:45–25:51compiled a Maithili Christamathie, which was a collection of literary texts. He provided the
457. 25:51–25:55rigorous academic framework necessary to prove to the colonial government that
458. 25:55–25:59Methily was a distinct language with its own morphology and history,
459. 25:59–26:01not merely a corrupted dialect of Hindi.
460. 26:01–26:05Which is foundational, right. Without Grierson, the later fights for constitutional
461. 26:05–26:08recognition would have had no legal or academic leg to stand on.
462. 26:08–26:13True. But the parallel history introduces a massive caveat here.
463. 26:13–26:17Grierson was a colonial administrator. He didn't wander the villages talking to farmers.
464. 26:17–26:22His informants, the people who guided his understanding of the language and curated the texts he analyzed,
465. 26:22–26:26were almost exclusively elite, upper-caste Brahmin scholars.
466. 26:26–26:33Ah, so the colonial gaze essentially legitimized one very specific, highly privileged version of
467. 26:33–26:35Methili while ignoring everyone else.
468. 26:35–26:41Exactly. The so-called new awakening of Methili in the 19th century was fundamentally skewed.
469. 26:42–26:47To see this bias in action, we just need to look at two poets from that exact same era.
470. 26:47–26:51On the elite side, the official history celebrates Chanda Ha.
471. 26:51–26:54He was attached to the court of the Maharaja of Darbhanga, right?
472. 26:54–26:55Yes.
473. 26:55–26:57Chanda Ha wrote the myth of Bashe Ramayana.
474. 26:57–27:02It was a monumental work and it proved that Maitrela could sustain a grand, classical,
475. 27:02–27:03epic narrative.
476. 27:03–27:07The mainstream canon treats him as the ultimate savior of modern Maitrela.
477. 27:07–27:12But the parallel history points to a completely different poet writing at the exact same time.
478. 27:12–27:13Feturil.
479. 27:13–27:16Who was Feturila and what was he writing about?
480. 27:16–27:19Faturil was producing literature from below.
481. 27:19–27:21Specifically, he wrote the Akali Covet.
482. 27:21–27:23This was visceral, devastating poetry
483. 27:23–27:25documenting the horrific agrarian suffering
484. 27:25–27:28during the famine of 1873 to 1874.
485. 27:28–27:29Oh, wow.
486. 27:29–27:29Yeah.
487. 27:29–27:32While the court poets were writing epics about gods,
488. 27:32–27:34Faturil was writing about the raw reality
489. 27:34–27:36of colonial misrule, systemic poverty,
490. 27:36–27:38and literal starvation.
491. 27:38–27:39And let me guess, the elite historians
492. 27:39–27:43didn't find his topics very refined.
493. 27:43–27:44They completely ignored him.
494. 27:44–27:49Fitzgerald's famine versus never entered the mainstream canon because they were uncomfortable.
495. 27:49–27:54They didn't fit the epic or devotional aesthetics preferred by the establishment.
496. 27:54–27:58His work remained unpublished and uncelebrated until Grierson actually included it in his
497. 27:58–28:03Christomathy, and even then it was treated more as an ethnographic curiosity than high
498. 28:03–28:04literature.
499. 28:04–28:06It's the museum analogy all over again.
500. 28:06–28:12You put the pristine court-sponsored Ramayana in the glass display case and you shove
501. 28:12–28:16the screaming, starving reality of the farmers down into the basement.
502. 28:16–28:16Precisely.
503. 28:16–28:21And the most frustrating part is that this exclusion didn't end with the Victorians.
504. 28:21–28:26It carried right over into independent India, orchestrated by the Sahitya Academy.
505. 28:26–28:28India's National Academy of Letters.
506. 28:28–28:31They formally recognized Mothili in 1965.
507. 28:31–28:35For the mainstream Orthodox historians, this was the ultimate triumph.
508. 28:35–28:39It meant state funding, national awards, and prestige.
509. 28:39–28:42But the parallel movement refers to the Academy's reign
510. 28:42–28:45over Maintly as a festival of shame.
511. 28:45–28:48They do not mince words, festival of shame.
512. 28:48–28:50Why are they so angry at the National Academy?
513. 28:50–28:52Because they view the Academy's
514. 28:52–28:55Mathili advisory boards as having been completely captured
515. 28:55–28:59by elite conservative caste organizations.
516. 28:59–29:01The parallel historians argue that these boards
517. 29:01–29:05used state power to suppress subaltern literature
518. 29:05–29:06and distribute patronage
519. 29:06–29:08only within their own closed circles.
520. 29:08–29:10And they don't just allege this, right?
521. 29:10–29:12They brought the actual receipts.
522. 29:12–29:12They did.
523. 29:12–29:15Between 2011 and 2014, two researchers,
524. 29:15–29:18Vinid Utpal and Ashish Anjinghar,
525. 29:18–29:21filed a series of write to information requests.
526. 29:21–29:23For our listeners who might not be familiar,
527. 29:23–29:25an RTI in India is a legal mechanism
528. 29:25–29:29that forces government bodies to release their internal data.
529. 29:29–29:31It's a major anti-corruption tool.
530. 29:31–29:32Very powerful tool.
531. 29:32–29:34So they demand the data on who is getting
532. 29:34–29:37the state-funded translation and publication assignments
533. 29:37–29:39Formatilly, what did they actually find?
534. 29:39–29:43The RTI data reveal that over 90% of the Sahitia Academy
535. 29:43–29:45assignments went directly to friends, relatives,
536. 29:45–29:48and close associates of the 10-member advisory board.
537. 29:48–29:4990%.
538. 29:49–29:50Think about that in modern terms.
539. 29:50–29:53Imagine if the Academy awards were funded by taxpayer money,
540. 29:53–29:55and 90% of the Oscars were just handed out
541. 29:55–29:57to the judges, nephews, and cousins.
542. 29:57–29:58It's staggering.
543. 29:58–30:00And meanwhile, how many assignments
544. 30:00–30:04went to authors representing the parallel subaltern
545. 30:04–30:04tradition?
546. 30:04–30:05Zero.
547. 30:05–30:07It was a perfectly closed loop.
548. 30:07–30:11It was an institutional mechanism of obscurantism
549. 30:11–30:14designed to keep Mithili as an exclusive elite domain.
550. 30:14–30:17And perhaps the most glaring victim of this gatekeeping
551. 30:17–30:18wasn't even some obscure poet.
552. 30:18–30:20It was Hari Mohan Shah.
553. 30:20–30:22Let's talk about him because the way the academy
554. 30:22–30:23treated him is just mind-blowing.
555. 30:23–30:26He was arguably the most popular modern Mithili writer
556. 30:26–30:27of the 20th century, correct?
557. 30:27–30:29Undoubtedly.
558. 30:29–30:31In 1933, Hari Mohan Shah published a brilliant,
559. 30:31–30:34biting, satirical novel called Kanyadan.
560. 30:34–30:37It viciously attacked conservative marriage customs,
561. 30:37–30:40the dowry system, and the hypocrisy
562. 30:40–30:41of the Bomenical Orthodoxy.
563. 30:41–30:42Wow.
564. 30:42–30:43It was a massive bestseller.
565. 30:43–30:44Everyone read it.
566. 30:44–30:46He was shaking the foundations of the establishment
567. 30:46–30:46from the inside.
568. 30:46–30:47Yes.
569. 30:47–30:49But when the Sahitya Academy began giving out
570. 30:49–30:52their prestigious annual awards for Missile literature,
571. 30:52–30:54they steadfastly ignored him.
572. 30:54–30:57In fact, the sources point out an incredible detail.
573. 30:57–31:00In 1967, the Academy actually chose to leave the Mathili
574. 31:00–31:03Award completely blank, unrewarded,
575. 31:03–31:05rather than give it to Hari Mohan Chah.
576. 31:05–31:06That is just petty.
577. 31:06–31:09How does a national literary institution
578. 31:09–31:10justify refusing to acknowledge
579. 31:10–31:13the most widely read author in the language?
580. 31:13–31:15They justify it under the guise
581. 31:15–31:17of protecting classical standards.
582. 31:17–31:22Hari Mohan Chah was deemed too dangerous, too irreverent.
583. 31:22–31:24By denying him recognition,
584. 31:24–31:27the establishment sent a chilling message to all writers.
585. 31:27–31:29If you critique the social hierarchy,
586. 31:29–31:32if you make the elite uncomfortable,
587. 31:32–31:34you will be erased from the official record,
588. 31:34–31:36regardless of your talent or popularity.
589. 31:36–31:40Okay, so if you are a sub-altern writer or a satirist
590. 31:40–31:44or anyone outside that 10-member board's inner circle,
591. 31:44–31:46the front door is locked,
592. 31:46–31:48the government academies are shutting you out.
593. 31:48–31:48What do you do?
594. 31:48–31:49You build your own house.
595. 31:49–31:51Exactly, you don't just give up,
596. 31:51–31:52you build an entirely new house,
597. 31:52–31:55and that brings us to the final act of this story,
598. 31:55–31:57the modern resistance.
599. 31:57–31:58To build their own house,
600. 31:58–32:00the parallel movement first had to reclaim
601. 32:00–32:05demographic reality of the region. They focused on what they call the throbbing human heart of the
602. 32:05–32:11mice elite tradition. Meaning what exactly? This means bypassing the written elite manuscripts
603. 32:11–32:17entirely and centering the vast folk literature preserved orally by dollots and lowercasts.
604. 32:17–32:22Because realistically they are the demographic majority. Exactly. And the scale of this oral
605. 32:22–32:27literature is just breathtaking. We were talking about massive epics. The mainstream ignores them
606. 32:27–32:32because they aren't written down in classical verse, but these epics are the literal lifeblood of the
607. 32:32–32:37culture. The sources mention a few of these. There's Salhasa, which is the story of a guardian spirit
608. 32:37–32:43revered by the Dusada community. There's Dina Badri, preserved by the Musahar community, which is
609. 32:43–32:48this powerful tale of brothers resisting bonded labor. But let's dive into just one of them
610. 32:48–32:53to understand the scale. Talk to me about Lorica. Lorica is a sprawling heroic epic that
611. 32:53–32:56that celebrates Yadava strength and chivalry.
612. 32:56–32:59It is an incredibly complex narrative involving love,
613. 32:59–33:01war and social honor,
614. 33:01–33:04but what is truly staggering is the performance itself.
615. 33:04–33:07This isn't a poem you read in a book over an hour.
616. 33:07–33:09The Loret Gita is a living performance
617. 33:09–33:11that can take up to 36 hours to sing.
618. 33:11–33:1236 hours?
619. 33:12–33:15That's not a poem, that's an entire television season
620. 33:15–33:16delivered from memory.
621. 33:16–33:17It's a communal event.
622. 33:17–33:20It is a living, breathing language,
623. 33:20–33:23existing completely outside of the control of state academies.
624. 33:23–33:26The singers are the true custodians of the language.
625. 33:26–33:28And the parallel movement isn't just looking backward
626. 33:28–33:30at ancient epics either.
627. 33:30–33:32They are championing contemporary writers
628. 33:32–33:35who are tackling modern harsh realities.
629. 33:35–33:38Writers who the mainstream actively tried to ignore.
630. 33:38–33:40Yes, writers like Bechantakur,
631. 33:40–33:43he pioneered a parallel Dullet theater.
632. 33:43–33:44The mainstream Mithili theater
633. 33:44–33:47often relied on light slapstick or historical romances.
634. 33:47–33:49Which is pretty standard.
635. 33:49–33:55Yeah. But Bishanlaker's work is described by the movement as a necessary slap on the face of that elite theater,
636. 33:55–33:58bringing the stark violence of cast realities straight to the stage.
637. 33:58–34:01And then there is Jagdish Prasad Mandal.
638. 34:01–34:06Mandal is a pivotal figure. He writes from deeply within the sub-ulchern experience.
639. 34:06–34:15His novel, Pangu, which eventually forced the academy to reluctantly recognize him much later in 2021, it represents a seismic shift.
640. 34:15–34:16Because of what he writes about.
641. 34:16–34:21Exactly. He doesn't write romanticized pastoral stories about village life. He writes about the
642. 34:21–34:27crippled agricultural system, the exploitation of farmers, and the raw, unvarnished struggles of
643. 34:27–34:32modern rural economics. And we absolutely cannot forget the women writers. If you look at the
644. 34:32–34:37official mainstream anthologies curated by the elites, women are virtually invisible.
645. 34:37–34:42The parallel history has done immense work to unearth and highlight a deeply suppressed
646. 34:42–34:47canon of female voices. They highlight contemporary playwrights like Viparani, critical scholars
647. 34:47–34:53like Runghadi Devi, and they promote the first major anthology of Mathilli women poets titled
648. 34:53–34:56Ijoriak-Ungaybimur.
649. 34:56–34:59But unearthing these voices is only half the battle, right? How do you distribute them?
650. 34:59–35:03If the Sahiti Akademi controls the funding and the printing presses, how do you get
651. 35:03–35:07Jagdish Prasad Mandala or the Lorica Epic into the hands of the actual people?
652. 35:07–35:08Right.
653. 35:08–35:1221st century, the Vadea movement found the ultimate loophole, the internet.
654. 35:12–35:17The digital rebellion of the Vadea movement is arguably their most consequential achievement.
655. 35:17–35:24They launched their efforts initially around 2000, and by 2004, Vadea became a massive e-journal.
656. 35:24–35:26They realized that digital spaces have no gatekeepers.
657. 35:26–35:27Yeah.
658. 35:27–35:31You don't need a corrupt advisory board to approve your publication if you own the
659. 35:31–35:32server yourself.
660. 35:32–35:36The scale of what they accomplished digitally is almost hard to comprehend.
661. 35:36–35:40According to the sources, they didn't just publish new articles, they went to war for
662. 35:40–35:45the archive, they digitized thousands of out-of-print Mathili books.
663. 35:45–35:48And they went further back than books.
664. 35:48–35:52They located and transcribed 11,000 ancient palm leaf manuscripts.
665. 35:52–35:54Wait, 11,000?
666. 35:54–35:56Yes, 11,000.
667. 35:56–35:59Manuscripts containing the old suppressed Terhuda script.
668. 35:59–36:03They brought the twilight language and the old genealogies right into the digital light.
669. 36:03–36:05And they didn't stop at just scanning things.
670. 36:05–36:08They engaged in like high level digital diplomacy.
671. 36:08–36:12They lobbied the Unicode Consortium, which is the international body that decides which
672. 36:12–36:15text characters appear on our computers and smartphones.
673. 36:15–36:19And they got the Tjuhuda script officially standardized in 2014.
674. 36:19–36:23That is a profound act of reclaiming linguistic sovereignty.
675. 36:23–36:28By getting Tjuhuda into Unicode, they ensure that the ancient script could not be permanently
676. 36:28–36:31erased by the dominance of Devan Agari.
677. 36:31–36:36Anyone anywhere in the world can now type in the original script of Mithila.
678. 36:36–36:42They generated a million pages, over 100 million words of Mathili Corpus online.
679. 36:42–36:46They initiated massive translation projects into English to bypass the Hindi language
680. 36:46–36:50gatekeepers entirely and take their literature straight to a global audience.
681. 36:50–36:51It's an incredible story.
682. 36:51–36:55It's a staggering triumph of grassroots organization.
683. 36:55–36:59But as we wrap up this massive story, I want to ask the ultimate so what question.
684. 36:59–37:05geopolitical implications. Exactly. We spent this entire time talking about 12th century philosophers,
685. 37:05–37:11poetic identity theft, and digitized palm leaves. Why does any of this literary history matter to the
686. 37:11–37:16actual physical political reality of the region today? Because in South Asia, language and political
687. 37:16–37:22power are inextricably linked. Historically, there was a very strong political movement demanding
688. 37:22–37:28a separate autonomous mythol estate within India based entirely on their distinct linguistic identity.
689. 37:28–37:32But that statehood movement ultimately failed. Why?
690. 37:32–37:37According to the sociological thesis of TK Uman, which the parallel movement cites heavily,
691. 37:37–37:42it failed because of caste dynamics. The majority of the population, the subaltern
692. 37:42–37:47castes, the deletes, the edavas, they looked at the people leading the statehood demand
693. 37:47–37:52and who did they see? Let me guess. They saw the exact same elite,
694. 37:52–37:57Brahminical orthodoxy that controlled the Ponji records and the Sahita academy.
695. 37:57–38:02Ah, so the working class majority essentially looked at the proposed new state and said,
696. 38:02–38:07why on earth would we fight for a new political border when the people who will run that state
697. 38:07–38:10are the exact same people who currently use the language to oppress us?
698. 38:10–38:15Precisely. They feared a separate state would merely formalize and enforce a Brahminical
699. 38:15–38:20monopoly over political and economic resources. And this is the profound strategic genius of
700. 38:20–38:22of the Vidya movement.
701. 38:22–38:25Because they realize that you can't build a state on an exclusive history.
702. 38:25–38:26Yes.
703. 38:26–38:32By constructing a parallel inclusive history, one that honors the Dalit epics like Lurica,
704. 38:32–38:37the women writers, the rebel mystic monks, and the trans-border diaspora, the Vidya
705. 38:37–38:43movement is actively attempting to build a broad democratic cultural base.
706. 38:43–38:47The underlying theory is that true linguistic and political autonomy can only be achieved
707. 38:47–38:51when the entire demographic feels ownership over the cultural identity.
708. 38:51–38:54Now, we need to be very clear for our listeners here.
709. 38:54–38:57We are analyzing the mechanics of a historical movement.
710. 38:57–39:01We are not endorsing the political demand for a separate mythole estate, nor are we
711. 39:01–39:06taking sides in the immensely complex, real-world caste politics of the region today.
712. 39:06–39:07Absolutely.
713. 39:07–39:11We are simply unpacking the sociological thesis presented in our source text about
714. 39:11–39:16why cultural movements either succeed in rallying a population or fail because they
715. 39:16–39:18they are too exclusionary.
716. 39:18–39:19It is a phenomenal case study.
717. 39:19–39:21It proves that arguing over medieval poetry
718. 39:21–39:24and ancient scripts isn't just academic naval gazing.
719. 39:24–39:27It is the very real work of socio-political state building.
720. 39:27–39:30And that brings us to the end of our journey today.
721. 39:30–39:34We have traveled through 1,000 years of cultural warfare.
722. 39:34–39:36We started with the coded twilight language
723. 39:36–39:38of rebellious monks.
724. 39:38–39:40We opened the Black Book of Genealogies
725. 39:40–39:42to see how historical figures were stripped
726. 39:42–39:43of their true identities.
727. 39:43–39:45We really covered a lot.
728. 39:45–39:48We watched a Nobel laureate fake a medieval language,
729. 39:48–39:50and we saw a modern digital rebellion
730. 39:50–39:55bypass a corrupt academy to scan 11,000 palm leaves
731. 39:55–39:57onto the internet.
732. 39:57–39:58The parallel history of mythology literature
733. 39:58–40:00is not just a catalog of books.
734. 40:00–40:02It is a testament to survival.
735. 40:02–40:04It is an incredible triumph.
736. 40:04–40:06But you know, as I look at how the Vidaean movement
737. 40:06–40:08secured this history,
738. 40:08–40:11I am left with a very unsettling thought about the future.
739. 40:11–40:12Oh, what's that?
740. 40:12–40:13Think about the medium of survival.
741. 40:13–40:19We've seen how the parallel movement brilliantly used the internet, servers, websites, Unicode,
742. 40:19–40:21to outmaneuver the institutional gatekeepers.
743. 40:21–40:25They realized they couldn't get their books into the state-funded brick and mortar libraries
744. 40:25–40:27so they built a digital library.
745. 40:27–40:30But this introduces a terrifying new vulnerability.
746. 40:30–40:31How so?
747. 40:31–40:33I mean, the internet is forever, right?
748. 40:33–40:34Is it?
749. 40:34–40:41If a culture's true, unedited heritage now exists primarily on independent, decentralized
750. 40:41–40:43digital servers.
751. 40:43–40:47What happens if the funding for those servers dries up and they go dark?
752. 40:47–40:52What happens in 50 years when the specific digital formats they use to encode those 11,000
753. 40:52–40:57palm leaves become obsolete and unreadable by new technology?
754. 40:57–41:01The physical palm leaves survived for centuries in the physical world.
755. 41:01–41:05By moving the parallel history to the cloud to escape the gatekeepers, have they permanently
756. 41:05–41:09secured their heritage or have they simply transferred it to a medium that is infinitely
757. 41:09–41:10more fragile?
758. 41:10–41:12That is a haunting question.
759. 41:12–41:16You escape the locked basement of the museum, but you move into a digital cloud that could
760. 41:16–41:19evaporate with a single server crash.
761. 41:19–41:24Something for all of us to really mull over as our own lives become increasingly digital.
762. 41:24–41:27Thank you all so much for joining us on this deep dive.
763. 41:27–41:31The next time you walk into a Grand Museum or read an official historical account, remember
764. 41:31–41:35to ask yourself whose voices were erased to make this story look so clean.
765. 41:35–41:37Keep questioning the narrative and we'll see you next time.

Plain text

Imagine if tomorrow morning someone discovered a box of old, moldy letters in a basement in London. Okay, color me intrigued. Right. And these letters proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that William Shakespeare wasn't this wealthy, respectable English gentleman at all. Oh wow. Yeah. Imagine finding out he was actually like a lower-class street poet, someone entirely outside the elite circles, and that the royal court had basically stolen his identity, scrubbed his background, and repackaged him to make the empire look good. I mean that would completely upend centuries of academic study. People would absolutely lose their minds over that. Right. The entire industry built around Shakespeare would collapse overnight. Well what if I told you that exact kind of historical identity theft isn't just a hypothetical? Wait, you're saying this actually happened? It actually happened and it's just one tiny piece of a thousand-year literary cover-up that we are digging into today. So welcome to the deep dive. We are so glad you're here with us. We really are. Today we're looking at this massive sprawling battle over, you know, who gets to write history, who gets to erase it, and how people fight back. Yeah, and the battleground we are exploring today is the history of the Mothili language and its literature. And I have to say, our source material for this is just monumental. It's huge. It really is. We're We're working with excerpts from this staggering undertaking called A Parallel History of Mythla and Metheli Literature. And this thing spans volumes one through one hundred. A hundred of volumes? That is wild. Yeah. It's an archive curated by Gugendra Thakur and a collective known as the Videha Parallel Literary Movement. Now, I know you, the listener, might be thinking, Matili, I'm not a linguist specializing in South Asia, so why does this matter to me? Which is a fair question. Totally fair. exactly what I thought when I first looked at this massive stack of sources. But look, Mathilius has spoken by tens of millions of people across India and Nepal, but for decades, its official history has been presented as this very pristine, elite, upper caste, predominantly Brahminical tradition. It's been sold as a language of courts and kings. But this parallel history, these 100 volumes, they completely tear that narrative to shreds. They really do. Yeah, they reveal this suppressed history that is radical, subaltern, it crosses national borders and it's now fueling a massive digital rebellion. Which is fascinating. It is. But to answer that question of why you, the listener, should care, because this isn't just a story about one language. It is a terrifyingly clear masterclass in how institutional power constructs what we just blindly accept as truth. Yeah, exactly. It shows us the literal mechanics of how marginalized voices can be systematically erased from the record and crucially how those voices are using the internet right now to completely bypass the traditional gatekeepers of culture. It's essentially a blueprint for cultural survival. Right. So to understand how deep this goes we have to go back to the very beginning. We're talking between the 8th and 12th centuries. Let's do it. When you read the official mainstream histories of Macyli they usually just gloss over the earliest texts from this era. like they treat them like some vague, archaic curiosity that belongs to a general ancient past, not specifically to Methili. Yeah, but the parallel history places these texts, which are called the chariopadas, absolutely front and center. So what are the chariopadas, exactly? Well context is crucial here. To understand the chariopadas, we first have to understand where the language even came from. So Mithili evolved from something called Magadi Precreate. Okay, let's pause right there for a second. What exactly is a precreate? Are we talking about a dead language or something people actually spoke on the street? Oh, definitely on the street. Prakrits were the everyday vernacular languages of ancient India. This is as opposed to Sanskrit, which was, you know, the highly formalized elite language of religion and literature. Oh, got it. So Sanskrit is the High Court and Prakrit is the local tavern. That's a good way to put it. And Magadi Prakrit was the specific vernacular spoken in the eastern part of the subcontinent. It was actually the language of the ancient Malaya Empire. So think of historical figures like the Emperor Ashoka. Okay, wow. That's old. Very old. So from that ancient root over centuries, regional languages began to branch off. And the Charipadas are where we see the very first distinct sparks of what would eventually become monthly. And what's wild is that these texts aren't royal decrees or like dry historical ledgers. They are 50 mystical songs composed by 23 different poets. And our sources say these poets where Vajrayana Sita, which sounds incredibly profound, but what does that actually mean? Yeah, it does sound intense. Vajrayana is a form of tantric Buddhism, and a Sita is essentially a realized master or a mystic. We actually have names for these figures from the texts, Luipada, Kanapada, Saraha. Okay, so they were monks. Yes, but what's really important here is who they were in the social hierarchy. Because they were not court intellectuals living in luxury, they often came from the very lowest strata of society. We're talking about sweepers, arrow makers, cowherds. Oh wow, so these are really working class mystics. Exactly, they were roaming nonsectarian monks and their choice of language was a deliberate act of defiance. They did not write in Sanskrit, which as we mentioned was the gate kept language of the educated upper castes. Instead they wrote in a style called Sandhya Vasha which translates to Twilight language. I love that term so much, Twilight language. It sounds like something straight out of a Tolkien novel. How did Twilight Language actually work in practice? It worked as a code. It was a language that operated on multiple levels simultaneously. So on the surface, a song might seem to be about a completely mundane activity, like a brewing liquor or hunting. But the Twilight Language used paradoxes and esoteric metaphors to provide instructions for their secret heterodox spiritual practices. It was designed to be understood only by the initiated, while flying completely under the radar of the Orthodox religious authorities. Okay, but let me push back on this a bit. Were they actually trying to start some sort of social revolution, or were they just writing in a coded local language because it was practical? Like maybe that's just the only language their followers actually understood. That's a great question. And the parallel history argues that it was absolutely both. You really can't separate the spiritual from the social here. Interesting. By explicitly choosing to write in what was called Decileviana, which means the language of the people, they were actively rejecting the sedentary, cast-bound, orthodox discourse of their time. So it was a conscious rebellion. Completely. They were basically saying, we don't need your elite Sanskrit to achieve enlightenment. And we don't need it to express complex philosophical thought, either. So they were bypassing the institutional gatekeepers of the 9th century. Exactly. Scholars in the parallel tradition like Rahul Sankrition have rigorously analyzed these occult songs. And they've demonstrated how their linguistic structure, what linguists call morphology, matches protomythally. They are the undeniable roots of the language. But the mainstream narrative waters this all down, right? Oh, absolutely. By treating the Charriapadas as just this shared, generic, eastern heritage, The mainstream history neatly avoids acknowledging the radical, anti-cast, subaltern origins of the language itself. It's like discovering that a highly formalized, classically trained symphony orchestra actually traces its roots back to an underground punk rock movement. And the directors of the symphony are just deeply embarrassed by it. They want everyone to think they've always been wearing tuxedos. There's a very vivid way to frame it. The parallel tradition, on the other hand, embraces the punk rock roots. view these mystic monks as the original subaltern resistance. Which raises the million dollar question for me. If the language started out in the dirt, on the roads, as this democratic tool of working class mystics, how did it become so intensely restricted later on? Right. I mean how do you go from twilight language to a pristine elite museum exhibit? Well, that requires tools of control. And looking at the sources, there are a few tools more effective for controlling a culture than the literal scripts they write with and the ledgers they use to track their people. So true. The history of a language's alphabet is rarely just about linguistics, right? Yeah. It's almost always about political autonomy. Yeah. For nearly a thousand years, Melideal wasn't written in the script most people associate with Hindi today. It had its own distinct ancient script called Terhuta, or sometimes Mithlaksura. Right. And the sources mention the script evolved from the ancient Brahmi script way back in the seventh century. We even have physical proof of it, like the Mendar Hill stone inscriptions. Exactly. But Teruda wasn't just a basic alphabet. The sources say it was heavily associated with Tantric-Yantra motifs. What does that mean? Well, a Yantra in Tantric traditions is a mystical diagram. It's often composed of intersecting geometric shapes, and it's used as an aid in meditation or ritual. Okay. The Tehuda script was highly ornamental, and its curves and lines actually reflected some of this sacred geometry. But it wasn't just functional, it carried the spiritual and aesthetic weight of the culture. It was a mature, sophisticated script used for everything from academic treatises to everyday correspondence. But over the last hundred years, Trujuta was essentially pushed off a cliff. It was systematically marginalized. First it lost ground to a script called Kythi. What was Kythi used for? Kythi was a more functional cursive script. It was used primarily by the Kyosthik community, who were the traditional record keepers and administrators. They used it for bookkeeping, land records and legal documents. Oh, okay. So the administrative necessity started superseding the cultural aesthetic. Yes, exactly. But the fatal blow really came the 20th century with the wholesale institutional adoption of Devan Agari. Devan Agari being the script used for Sanskrit and modern Hindi. Now, the official justification for this switch always sounds so reasonable, right? Like, they say, oh, we have printing presses that are already set up for Dave Nagari. It's just easier for the colonial administration. It's more efficient. Yeah, but efficiency is the classic Trojan horse for assimilation. Ooh, that's a good quote. The parallel history emphasizes that this switch was a deliberate mechanism of dialectization. Let's break that down because dialectization sounds very academic. Is that just when people start treating a language as less important? It's a bit more insidious than that. Think of it this way. Imagine a historic building covered in a vibrant, unique, thousand-year-old mural. Dialectization is when a new landlord comes in and paints the entire building with a standard beige institutional paint. Oh wow. Right. And once it's beige, the landlord can point to it and say, see, it looks exactly like all the other beige buildings on the block. It's nothing special. It's just a minor variation of the main property. Okay, that makes total sense. So by forcing Mathili to be written in the Hindi script, it became visually indistinguishable to outsiders. Exactly. It allowed colonial officials and later the Indian state governments to just easily classify Mathili as merely a rugged regional dialect of Hindi, rather than acknowledging it as an independent language with a millennium of distinct literary history. Precisely. You strip away the visual identity and you instantly weaken the claim to political and cultural autonomy. But as you mentioned, the script was really only the first tool of control. The sources dive deeply into a social mechanism called the Panjhi Proband. Yes, the Panjhi system. When I first read about this in the sources, I was actually quite impressed. It was established around the 14th century and it was this incredibly sophisticated, massive system of genealogical record keeping for Mithal Brahmins and Khyastas. And if you read the mainstream historians like Mahamohapatiya, Parmesh Warchaw, They tout this as the crowning lorry of their culture. And if you look at it purely as an archival feat, it is astonishing. I mean, they maintain vast intricate databases of lineages, marriages, and ancestral movements across centuries. And they did all of this without computers. Right. But here's where I need you to explain the patch. Because on paper, meticulous historical record keeping sounds fantastic. I mean, we're doing a deep dive on history right now. We obviously love archives. We do. So why does the parallel movement despise the Pongee system so intensely? Like, what is the danger in knowing your family tree? Well, the danger is in how that data is used. The parallel movement denounces the Pongee system because it wasn't a benign historical society. It was a vicious instrument of social engineering. How so? Like, practically speaking. It functioned almost like a draconian credit score for human value and purity. The records were used to enforce an incredibly strict system of Berminical patriarchy. Okay. You couldn't just marry who you wanted. Your lineages had to be checked against the Pange to ensure absolute caste purity and to avoid prohibited degrees of consanguinity. Wow. Yeah. And if the registrars, the Pangea Charis, found a flaw in your lineage, your family could be instantly downgraded or completely ostracized. It dictated who controlled wealth, who could own land, and who was socially invisible. So it was less of a family tree and more of a weapon to maintain a very exclusive club. Precisely. But the Vidae Hill movement didn't just complain about this system in abstract terms. In 2009, they executed what I can only describe as a massive historical leak. They digitized and published something called the Dushan Pangee. The Black Book. The Black Book. These were the secret suppressed files of the genealogical records. It's literally like a cultural WikiLeaks. So what did the black book actually show? It proved that the elite historians had been blatantly falsifying their own pristine records to cover up impurities among their most revered figures. Unbelievable. And the most shocking example in the sources is the case of Gangesh Upadaya. Right. Let's talk about Gangesh, because this ties back to that idea of historical identity theft I brought up at the start. How big of a deal was this guy? He was a Titan. He lived in the 12th century and wrote a text called the Tupikintamani. He essentially founded the Navinaya school. Which means what exactly for those of us who aren't philosophy majors? Sure. Navinaya translates to new logic. It was a revolutionary system of logic and epistemology that deeply influenced Indian philosophy for centuries. Being the founder of Navinaya is akin to being the Isaac Newton of Indian philosophical logic. He's an absolute superstar of the intellect. So you have the superstar and the orthodox upper caste establishment claims him as their ultimate poster boy He's their proof of intellectual and cultural superiority But the douche in Ponji the black book Revealed a reality that terrified the orthodox establishment the records showed that gang of Shubhity I had actually married a charm Karini a woman from the lower leather tanning cast Yes, a union that defied every single rigid rule the Ponji system was built to enforce and the records also contain an entry indicating that his family was born five years after his father's death. Okay, wow. So his personal life, his marriage, his family origins, they completely shattered the myth of the pure orthodox, rule-abiding, Ramana scholar. Completely. And here is where the institutional cover-up comes in. The sources detail how a very prominent elite historian named Ramanath Shah, who was a massive power broker in the Sahita Academy, which is India's National Academy of Letters, he actively suppressed these specific Ponji records. Wait, really? He knew they existed, but he buried them. I have to stop you there. Why? I mean, I understand prejudice, but from a purely historical standpoint, why would a scholar actively destroy the true biography of the man they're supposed to be celebrating? Because the institution's legitimacy depended on the illusion of unbroken purity. If their greatest philosopher was mingling across strict caste lines, the entire justification for the Ponji system. idea that strict caste separation is necessary for intellectual and spiritual greatness just falls apart. Wow. So as the parallel history terms it, they committed an honor killing of his legacy. They erased his wife. They erased his actual lived reality. I mean, the sources point out that even as late as 2016, the Sahiti Academy was still publishing monographs about him that perpetuated the sanitized fake biography. That is the raw power of institutional gatekeeping. You take the man's genius, but you execute his true identity so it serves your political narrative. And you know, if the establishment was willing to erase the wife of their greatest philosopher just to keep his cast pure, it really makes you wonder what they did to their artists. Which brings us to the Shakespeare level bombshell I mentioned at the start of the show. The identity theft of Vidyapatti. Yeah. Vidyapatti Thakur is the undisputed son around which Massili literature orbits. He lived from roughly 1360 to 1450. Even to the mainstream institutional scholars, he is known as the Abhinava Jayadeva, the new Jayadeva. So the official history paints him as this highly refined, deeply devout Brahmin courtier. He's a polymath, right? They say he wrote dense treatises in Sanskrit and also in something called Abhahada. What is Abhahada? Abhahada is a really fascinating linguistic stage. It was a transitional literary language that basically bridged the gap between the older upper-brunch languages and the early modern eastern languages like Mithili, Bengali and Asamese. So he's writing in Sanskrit, he's writing in Abhahada, but what he's really famous for, the works that actually made him immortal, are his Padavali. Yes. These are the incredibly beautiful musical songs about the divine love of Radha and Krishna, and these were written in the local vernacular, in Mithili. And the mainstream narrative claims that this single elite Brahmin genius graciously lowered himself to write in the vernacular and by doing so he elevated the local dialect to high art. But the Vedea movement drops an absolute hammer on this narrative. They argued that the official history has deliberately taken two entirely different people and smashed them together into one mythological figure. This is one of the most contentious and significant interventions by the parallel historians. Oh that. it that the famous Padavali poet, the person who wrote those beloved, racy, crisp, mathilly love songs that the common people actually memorized and sang in the fields, is entirely distinct from the Sanskrit and Avahara court writer named Vidyapati Thakura, who actually lives later. Let me make sure I'm wrapping my head around this. They are saying there's an elite Sanskrit writing court bureaucrat named Vidyati. And then there's an earlier populist poet who wrote the massive folk anthems, who was also named Vizipati. And the historians just decided, hey, let's pretend the rich courtier wrote all the popular folk songs too. That is exactly their assertion. The parallel narrative critiques mainstream historians were deliberately fusing them. And the motive is clear, right? If you admit the greatest poetry in your language was written by an unknown, possibly lower caste vernacular poet, the Orthodox court loses its cultural supremacy. Oh wow. By claiming the two Vizipatis are one person, The brahminical establishment successfully appropriates the vernacular genius and claims it as their own property. It is literal historical identity theft. They took a populist icon and dressed him up in elite caste-assist attire. And the Vedeja movement pushes back against his visually, don't they? They do. Their e-journal logo is a sketch by the artist Panaclaumandl, and it depicts what they call a subaltern vidyapati. Yes. They acknowledged that the true Pottavale poet's specific cast is historically uncertain, but they fiercely contest his appropriation by the elite. The true vidyapati of the parallel tradition made a conscious choice to write in Diziluviana the language of the people. Right. His poetry was direct, it was filled with imagery of contemporary village life, and it resonated so deeply that his lines literally passed into common speech. And here's the thing about truly great resonant art, you know, you just can't keep it in a box. Even as the elite historians tried to sanitize him and lock him up in the court, his vernacular songs sprouted wings. They didn't just stay in Mothila. They sparked a massive transnational cultural explosion that the parallel history calls the Great Diaspora, which is such an important era. We often suffer from a modern bias where we assume regional languages are strictly confined to their current geographical borders. Yeah, we totally do. But the sources frame Mathilli not as a localized dialect, but as the Latin of Eastern India. It was a donor civilization. It profoundly shaped the literature of its neighbors. We're talking Nepal, Bengal, Assam, and Orissa. Let's look at Nepal first because this feels like a massive blind spot in standard history. In the medieval period, the ruling dynasty in Massila, the Oynwars, starts facing conquests. Things get very dangerous. Where do the scholars and artists go? They flee north, up into the Himalayas. They saw it sanctuary in the Nepal Valley, specifically under the Malola Kings. And what happened there is just remarkable. Under rulers like Jagatjur-Tirmala and later Bhupatindramala, Mathilli didn't just survive as a refugee language, it actually became the language of the court. I mean, the sources mention that Bhupatindramala alone composed 26 plays in Mathilli. Yes. For roughly 150 years, Mathilli drama essentially replaced Sanskrit drama in the high courts of Nepal. this golden age of transporter literature. But if you read modern official histories today, how do they categorize all this Mala era literature? They frequently label it simply as Nepali heritage, which effectively erases the Mathili roots. The parallel historians are trying to reclaim this era as a shared, classical age of newer Mathili civilization that operated all along the India-Tibet trade rest. Okay, so Nepal adopts it, but the story in Bengal is even wilder. It really is. In Bengal, they didn't just adopt Mithili. The Bengali singers and poets became so obsessed with Vigipati's love songs that they actually invented a fake hybrid language just so they could sound more like him. It is an unparalleled phenomenon in literary history. It's known as Brajabuli. Explain how this actually works, like linguistically. Well, many Bengali Vaishnava singers who were devotees of Krishna had traveled to study in Mithila. They were so captivated by the rhythm, the emotional depth, and the specific cadence of Vigipati's Methili Padavali that they wanted to compose their own devotional songs in the exact same style. Okay. But they didn't write them in pure Bengali, nor did they write in pure Methili. They created an artificial literary language. It was a mix of Bengali vocabulary heavily modified with Methili grammar and phonetic structures. So they formed a massive linguistic cover band of Vigipati. A profoundly successful one too. Brajibhuli wasn't just a fleeting trend, It became the primary vehicle for the entire medieval Bengali-Vaishnaval lyric movement. Absolute giants of Bengali literature wrote their masterpieces in this mongrel language. And this obsession lasted for centuries. I have to bring up the Tagore anecdote from the sources because it is just too perfect. Oh, it's brilliant. We're talking about the late 19th century, Rabindranath Tagore, who would eventually become the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in literature. He's young, he's ambitious, and the cultural clout of this mathilly-based Brajabuli is still so strong that he decides he wants in on it. Yes, Tagore composed a series of exquisite lyrics in Brajabuli. But rather than publishing them under his own name as Modern Pastiches, he orchestrated a literal literary hoax. Wait, really? Yeah, he claimed he had discovered the lost manuscripts of an ancient medieval poet named Banu Singha. And he published his own poems as the Banu Singha Thakur Padavali. He just faked it entirely. And did people believe him? Oh, the Bengali literary elite completely bought it at first. They praised these ancient texts. Entirely unaware they were actually written by a teenager in the 1870s. That is hilarious. It really just demonstrates how deeply the aesthetic of Mathili had penetrated the intellectual psyche of eastern India. And it wasn't just Bengal. The sources show a parallel development in a psalm, known as Brajavali. Yes. Driven by Sramanta Sankara Deva in the late 15th century, Sankara Deva was a massive cultural and religious figure in Assam. He traveled extensively through Mithila and was deeply inspired by the Mithili-Kirtania drama traditions. To write his famous Aiki and At plays, he created his own hybrid language, mixing Mithili with Asimis. It is just staggering. Mithili was a sprawling trans-regional superpower. It was the lingua franca of eastern Indian devotionalism. So how does a language that shapes entire neighboring cultures that influences future Nobel laureates end up fighting for its own life? It's a steedfall. It really is. How does it go from a donor civilization to a language struggling for basic recognition in its own homeland by the 20th century? Well that tragic art brings us to the intersection of colonialism, class bias, and the rise of modern institutional hegemony. To understand the decline we have to look at the 19th century and the arrival of the British colonial administration, specifically an Irish civil servant and linguist named George Abraham Gerrison. Gerrison seems like a very complicated figure in this narrative. On one hand, the sources give him a lot of credit. He essentially throws Maithili a lifeline when it was drowning in Hindi assimilation. He did. In 1881, Gerrison published a systematic grammar of Maithili and later compiled a Maithili Christamathie, which was a collection of literary texts. He provided the rigorous academic framework necessary to prove to the colonial government that Methily was a distinct language with its own morphology and history, not merely a corrupted dialect of Hindi. Which is foundational, right. Without Grierson, the later fights for constitutional recognition would have had no legal or academic leg to stand on. True. But the parallel history introduces a massive caveat here. Grierson was a colonial administrator. He didn't wander the villages talking to farmers. His informants, the people who guided his understanding of the language and curated the texts he analyzed, were almost exclusively elite, upper-caste Brahmin scholars. Ah, so the colonial gaze essentially legitimized one very specific, highly privileged version of Methili while ignoring everyone else. Exactly. The so-called new awakening of Methili in the 19th century was fundamentally skewed. To see this bias in action, we just need to look at two poets from that exact same era. On the elite side, the official history celebrates Chanda Ha. He was attached to the court of the Maharaja of Darbhanga, right? Yes. Chanda Ha wrote the myth of Bashe Ramayana. It was a monumental work and it proved that Maitrela could sustain a grand, classical, epic narrative. The mainstream canon treats him as the ultimate savior of modern Maitrela. But the parallel history points to a completely different poet writing at the exact same time. Feturil. Who was Feturila and what was he writing about? Faturil was producing literature from below. Specifically, he wrote the Akali Covet. This was visceral, devastating poetry documenting the horrific agrarian suffering during the famine of 1873 to 1874. Oh, wow. Yeah. While the court poets were writing epics about gods, Faturil was writing about the raw reality of colonial misrule, systemic poverty, and literal starvation. And let me guess, the elite historians didn't find his topics very refined. They completely ignored him. Fitzgerald's famine versus never entered the mainstream canon because they were uncomfortable. They didn't fit the epic or devotional aesthetics preferred by the establishment. His work remained unpublished and uncelebrated until Grierson actually included it in his Christomathy, and even then it was treated more as an ethnographic curiosity than high literature. It's the museum analogy all over again. You put the pristine court-sponsored Ramayana in the glass display case and you shove the screaming, starving reality of the farmers down into the basement. Precisely. And the most frustrating part is that this exclusion didn't end with the Victorians. It carried right over into independent India, orchestrated by the Sahitya Academy. India's National Academy of Letters. They formally recognized Mothili in 1965. For the mainstream Orthodox historians, this was the ultimate triumph. It meant state funding, national awards, and prestige. But the parallel movement refers to the Academy's reign over Maintly as a festival of shame. They do not mince words, festival of shame. Why are they so angry at the National Academy? Because they view the Academy's Mathili advisory boards as having been completely captured by elite conservative caste organizations. The parallel historians argue that these boards used state power to suppress subaltern literature and distribute patronage only within their own closed circles. And they don't just allege this, right? They brought the actual receipts. They did. Between 2011 and 2014, two researchers, Vinid Utpal and Ashish Anjinghar, filed a series of write to information requests. For our listeners who might not be familiar, an RTI in India is a legal mechanism that forces government bodies to release their internal data. It's a major anti-corruption tool. Very powerful tool. So they demand the data on who is getting the state-funded translation and publication assignments Formatilly, what did they actually find? The RTI data reveal that over 90% of the Sahitia Academy assignments went directly to friends, relatives, and close associates of the 10-member advisory board. 90%. Think about that in modern terms. Imagine if the Academy awards were funded by taxpayer money, and 90% of the Oscars were just handed out to the judges, nephews, and cousins. It's staggering. And meanwhile, how many assignments went to authors representing the parallel subaltern tradition? Zero. It was a perfectly closed loop. It was an institutional mechanism of obscurantism designed to keep Mithili as an exclusive elite domain. And perhaps the most glaring victim of this gatekeeping wasn't even some obscure poet. It was Hari Mohan Shah. Let's talk about him because the way the academy treated him is just mind-blowing. He was arguably the most popular modern Mithili writer of the 20th century, correct? Undoubtedly. In 1933, Hari Mohan Shah published a brilliant, biting, satirical novel called Kanyadan. It viciously attacked conservative marriage customs, the dowry system, and the hypocrisy of the Bomenical Orthodoxy. Wow. It was a massive bestseller. Everyone read it. He was shaking the foundations of the establishment from the inside. Yes. But when the Sahitya Academy began giving out their prestigious annual awards for Missile literature, they steadfastly ignored him. In fact, the sources point out an incredible detail. In 1967, the Academy actually chose to leave the Mathili Award completely blank, unrewarded, rather than give it to Hari Mohan Chah. That is just petty. How does a national literary institution justify refusing to acknowledge the most widely read author in the language? They justify it under the guise of protecting classical standards. Hari Mohan Chah was deemed too dangerous, too irreverent. By denying him recognition, the establishment sent a chilling message to all writers. If you critique the social hierarchy, if you make the elite uncomfortable, you will be erased from the official record, regardless of your talent or popularity. Okay, so if you are a sub-altern writer or a satirist or anyone outside that 10-member board's inner circle, the front door is locked, the government academies are shutting you out. What do you do? You build your own house. Exactly, you don't just give up, you build an entirely new house, and that brings us to the final act of this story, the modern resistance. To build their own house, the parallel movement first had to reclaim demographic reality of the region. They focused on what they call the throbbing human heart of the mice elite tradition. Meaning what exactly? This means bypassing the written elite manuscripts entirely and centering the vast folk literature preserved orally by dollots and lowercasts. Because realistically they are the demographic majority. Exactly. And the scale of this oral literature is just breathtaking. We were talking about massive epics. The mainstream ignores them because they aren't written down in classical verse, but these epics are the literal lifeblood of the culture. The sources mention a few of these. There's Salhasa, which is the story of a guardian spirit revered by the Dusada community. There's Dina Badri, preserved by the Musahar community, which is this powerful tale of brothers resisting bonded labor. But let's dive into just one of them to understand the scale. Talk to me about Lorica. Lorica is a sprawling heroic epic that that celebrates Yadava strength and chivalry. It is an incredibly complex narrative involving love, war and social honor, but what is truly staggering is the performance itself. This isn't a poem you read in a book over an hour. The Loret Gita is a living performance that can take up to 36 hours to sing. 36 hours? That's not a poem, that's an entire television season delivered from memory. It's a communal event. It is a living, breathing language, existing completely outside of the control of state academies. The singers are the true custodians of the language. And the parallel movement isn't just looking backward at ancient epics either. They are championing contemporary writers who are tackling modern harsh realities. Writers who the mainstream actively tried to ignore. Yes, writers like Bechantakur, he pioneered a parallel Dullet theater. The mainstream Mithili theater often relied on light slapstick or historical romances. Which is pretty standard. Yeah. But Bishanlaker's work is described by the movement as a necessary slap on the face of that elite theater, bringing the stark violence of cast realities straight to the stage. And then there is Jagdish Prasad Mandal. Mandal is a pivotal figure. He writes from deeply within the sub-ulchern experience. His novel, Pangu, which eventually forced the academy to reluctantly recognize him much later in 2021, it represents a seismic shift. Because of what he writes about. Exactly. He doesn't write romanticized pastoral stories about village life. He writes about the crippled agricultural system, the exploitation of farmers, and the raw, unvarnished struggles of modern rural economics. And we absolutely cannot forget the women writers. If you look at the official mainstream anthologies curated by the elites, women are virtually invisible. The parallel history has done immense work to unearth and highlight a deeply suppressed canon of female voices. They highlight contemporary playwrights like Viparani, critical scholars like Runghadi Devi, and they promote the first major anthology of Mathilli women poets titled Ijoriak-Ungaybimur. But unearthing these voices is only half the battle, right? How do you distribute them? If the Sahiti Akademi controls the funding and the printing presses, how do you get Jagdish Prasad Mandala or the Lorica Epic into the hands of the actual people? Right. 21st century, the Vadea movement found the ultimate loophole, the internet. The digital rebellion of the Vadea movement is arguably their most consequential achievement. They launched their efforts initially around 2000, and by 2004, Vadea became a massive e-journal. They realized that digital spaces have no gatekeepers. Yeah. You don't need a corrupt advisory board to approve your publication if you own the server yourself. The scale of what they accomplished digitally is almost hard to comprehend. According to the sources, they didn't just publish new articles, they went to war for the archive, they digitized thousands of out-of-print Mathili books. And they went further back than books. They located and transcribed 11,000 ancient palm leaf manuscripts. Wait, 11,000? Yes, 11,000. Manuscripts containing the old suppressed Terhuda script. They brought the twilight language and the old genealogies right into the digital light. And they didn't stop at just scanning things. They engaged in like high level digital diplomacy. They lobbied the Unicode Consortium, which is the international body that decides which text characters appear on our computers and smartphones. And they got the Tjuhuda script officially standardized in 2014. That is a profound act of reclaiming linguistic sovereignty. By getting Tjuhuda into Unicode, they ensure that the ancient script could not be permanently erased by the dominance of Devan Agari. Anyone anywhere in the world can now type in the original script of Mithila. They generated a million pages, over 100 million words of Mathili Corpus online. They initiated massive translation projects into English to bypass the Hindi language gatekeepers entirely and take their literature straight to a global audience. It's an incredible story. It's a staggering triumph of grassroots organization. But as we wrap up this massive story, I want to ask the ultimate so what question. geopolitical implications. Exactly. We spent this entire time talking about 12th century philosophers, poetic identity theft, and digitized palm leaves. Why does any of this literary history matter to the actual physical political reality of the region today? Because in South Asia, language and political power are inextricably linked. Historically, there was a very strong political movement demanding a separate autonomous mythol estate within India based entirely on their distinct linguistic identity. But that statehood movement ultimately failed. Why? According to the sociological thesis of TK Uman, which the parallel movement cites heavily, it failed because of caste dynamics. The majority of the population, the subaltern castes, the deletes, the edavas, they looked at the people leading the statehood demand and who did they see? Let me guess. They saw the exact same elite, Brahminical orthodoxy that controlled the Ponji records and the Sahita academy. Ah, so the working class majority essentially looked at the proposed new state and said, why on earth would we fight for a new political border when the people who will run that state are the exact same people who currently use the language to oppress us? Precisely. They feared a separate state would merely formalize and enforce a Brahminical monopoly over political and economic resources. And this is the profound strategic genius of of the Vidya movement. Because they realize that you can't build a state on an exclusive history. Yes. By constructing a parallel inclusive history, one that honors the Dalit epics like Lurica, the women writers, the rebel mystic monks, and the trans-border diaspora, the Vidya movement is actively attempting to build a broad democratic cultural base. The underlying theory is that true linguistic and political autonomy can only be achieved when the entire demographic feels ownership over the cultural identity. Now, we need to be very clear for our listeners here. We are analyzing the mechanics of a historical movement. We are not endorsing the political demand for a separate mythole estate, nor are we taking sides in the immensely complex, real-world caste politics of the region today. Absolutely. We are simply unpacking the sociological thesis presented in our source text about why cultural movements either succeed in rallying a population or fail because they they are too exclusionary. It is a phenomenal case study. It proves that arguing over medieval poetry and ancient scripts isn't just academic naval gazing. It is the very real work of socio-political state building. And that brings us to the end of our journey today. We have traveled through 1,000 years of cultural warfare. We started with the coded twilight language of rebellious monks. We opened the Black Book of Genealogies to see how historical figures were stripped of their true identities. We really covered a lot. We watched a Nobel laureate fake a medieval language, and we saw a modern digital rebellion bypass a corrupt academy to scan 11,000 palm leaves onto the internet. The parallel history of mythology literature is not just a catalog of books. It is a testament to survival. It is an incredible triumph. But you know, as I look at how the Vidaean movement secured this history, I am left with a very unsettling thought about the future. Oh, what's that? Think about the medium of survival. We've seen how the parallel movement brilliantly used the internet, servers, websites, Unicode, to outmaneuver the institutional gatekeepers. They realized they couldn't get their books into the state-funded brick and mortar libraries so they built a digital library. But this introduces a terrifying new vulnerability. How so? I mean, the internet is forever, right? Is it? If a culture's true, unedited heritage now exists primarily on independent, decentralized digital servers. What happens if the funding for those servers dries up and they go dark? What happens in 50 years when the specific digital formats they use to encode those 11,000 palm leaves become obsolete and unreadable by new technology? The physical palm leaves survived for centuries in the physical world. By moving the parallel history to the cloud to escape the gatekeepers, have they permanently secured their heritage or have they simply transferred it to a medium that is infinitely more fragile? That is a haunting question. You escape the locked basement of the museum, but you move into a digital cloud that could evaporate with a single server crash. Something for all of us to really mull over as our own lives become increasingly digital. Thank you all so much for joining us on this deep dive. The next time you walk into a Grand Museum or read an official historical account, remember to ask yourself whose voices were erased to make this story look so clean. Keep questioning the narrative and we'll see you next time.

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