Maithili was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution by which amendment?
- A.71st Amendment Act, 1992
- B.92nd Amendment Act, 2003
- C.21st Amendment Act, 1967
- D.96th Amendment Act, 2011
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, the 92nd Amendment Act, 2003. This amendment added four languages to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, namely Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali, and raised the total number of scheduled languages from eighteen to twenty-two. Maithili is therefore the only language of Bihar in the Eighth Schedule, besides Hindi and Urdu which were there from the beginning.
Option A, the 71st Amendment of 1992, is the standard trap because it also added languages, but those were Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali, which took the list to eighteen. Option C, the 21st Amendment of 1967, added Sindhi, taking the list to fifteen. Option D, the 96th Amendment of 2011, changed Oriya to Odia in the Eighth Schedule and added no new language. Remember the sequence by the numbers of languages: fourteen at the start, fifteen in 1967, eighteen in 1992 and twenty-two in 2003.
Read the full article: Bihar Languages and Literature: Maithili, Bhojpuri, Magahi
Practice Questions
View allBy which title is the poet Vidyapati of Mithila remembered?
- A.Maithil Kokil
- B.Shakespeare of Bhojpuri
- C.Rashtrakavi
- D.Purvi Samrat
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Vidyapati was the poet of the Mithila court in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and his Maithili padavali of songs about Radha and Krishna is still sung in north Bihar.
Read the full explanation →Varna Ratnakara, regarded as the first prose work in Maithili, was written by whom?
- A.Vidyapati
- B.Chanda Jha
- C.Jyotirishwar Thakur
- D.Harimohan Jha
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His Varna Ratnakara, a fourteenth century work, is counted as the earliest prose composition in Maithili and indeed one of the earliest in any modern Indian language.
Read the full explanation →Which of these languages spoken in Bihar is NOT included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution?
- A.Hindi
- B.Urdu
- C.Bhojpuri
- D.Maithili
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Bhojpuri is spoken by crores of people in western Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Indian diaspora of Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname and Trinidad, and it has a rich folk theatre, yet it has not been added to the Eighth Schedule.
Read the full explanation →Which script was traditionally used for writing the Maithili language?
- A.Kaithi
- B.Tirhuta or Mithilakshar
- C.Sharada
- D.Brahmi
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This is the traditional script of the Mithila region, used for Maithili manuscripts, panjis of genealogy and ritual texts, and it is related to the eastern group of scripts that also produced Bengali and Assamese letters.
Read the full explanation →Bhikhari Thakur, known as the Shakespeare of Bhojpuri, is the author of which folk play?
- A.Bidesiya
- B.Maila Anchal
- C.Khattar Kaka
- D.Rashmirathi
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Bhikhari Thakur of Kutubpur in Saran district wrote, composed and staged plays with his own travelling troupe, and Bidesiya, on the suffering of a wife whose husband has migrated for work, became the name of a whole style of Bhojpuri theatre.
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