Bhojpur & Purvanchal · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
Bhojpuri has more speakers than several official languages of Europe and no place in the Eighth Schedule, which has been contested for decades. Outside India it has done better: it is a national language of Fiji in its Fiji Hindi form, an official-adjacent language in Mauritius, and the base of Sarnami in Suriname and the Netherlands and of Caribbean Hindustani in Trinidad and Guyana. In several of those places it has state support, a standardised orthography and university teaching that it lacks at home.
Speech varieties
The Ara, Buxar, Ballia and Varanasi register — the base of the film and music industry that carries the name.
Speakers: About 5.05 crore in the 2011 Census, and several million more overseas
Gorakhpur, Deoria, Siwan and Gopalganj, shading into Bajjika and, across the border, into the Bhojpuri of Nepal's Bara and Parsa districts.
Rohtas, Kaimur and the plateau edge, shading into Nagpuri and Sadri.
Descended from the Bhojpuri and Awadhi of nineteenth-century indentured migrants, levelled into new standards with English, Dutch, Fijian and Creole vocabulary. Fiji Hindi is a national language; Sarnami has a written literature in the Netherlands.
The city's own register — famously blunt, dense with address terms like guru and bhaiya, and the medium of the literature that made modern Hindi prose.
Indigenous terminology
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Girmitiya गिरमिटिया | An indentured emigrant — from a Bhojpuri pronunciation of the English "agreement" they signed. The word became the diaspora's own name for itself. |
| Bidesiya बिदेसिया | One who has gone abroad, and by extension the whole genre about it. The word carries loss, not adventure. |
| Sattu सत्तू | Roasted gram ground to flour — drunk, stuffed and carried; the food of anyone travelling for work. |
| Diara दियारा | The sandy island and bank land inside the Ganga's channel, cultivated between floods and held under customary rather than settled tenure — which has made it the setting for a great deal of the region's violence. |
| Kadhua कढ़ुआ | The brocade technique in which each motif is worked with its own needle so no thread floats behind the cloth — the mark of a hand-woven Banarasi. |
| Gamchha गमछा | A thin checked cotton cloth used as towel, headwrap, sling and belt. Outside the region it is the single most reliable marker of where its wearer is from. |
| Akhara अखाड़ा | A wrestling ground, and in Banaras also a singing society — the akharas of the city compete at Kajri and Holi in a tradition older than the concert stage. |
| Ghat घाट | A stepped riverbank. Varanasi has around eighty-four, each with a name, a function and an owner, two of them for cremation and the rest for everything else. |
| Masaan मसान | The cremation ground — and, at Manikarnika, the site of the Masaan Holi in which ash from the pyres is thrown like colour. |
| Banarasipan बनारसीपन | Banaras-ness — a self-described attitude of unhurriedness, irreverence and refusal to be impressed, which the city treats as its principal export. |
Sayings
| Saying | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Raand, saand, seedhi, sanyasi — inse bache to seve Kashi | Widows, bulls, stairs and ascetics — survive these and you may serve Kashi | Banaras's most quoted description of itself, and still an accurate list of what obstructs a walk through it. |
| Ghar ke bhedi Lanka dhaye | The insider brought down Lanka | Betrayal from within — a proverb from a region whose Ramlila runs for a month. |
| Jaan hai to jahan hai | If there is life, there is a world | Used to justify leaving — for Calcutta, Mumbai, the Gulf or, once, Fiji. The most consequential sentiment in the region's modern history. |
| Bhojpuri mati ke laal | A son of the Bhojpuri soil | The standard claim of belonging, used equally by a Chapra villager and by a fourth-generation Trinidadian — which is what makes this region unusual. |
Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Bhojpur & Purvanchal. (14)