Tirhuta (mithilakshar)

Tirhuta or Mithilakshar is the script used for the Maithili language which originated in Nepal.

Maithili is an Indo-Aryan language, which forms a part of the Indo-European language family.

At the moment Maithili, Bhojpuri, and a number of less common languages belong to the western group of East Indian languages (the so-called Bihar languages), unlike Hindi, which is a Central Indian language. In earlier studies, Maithili was considered a dialect of Hindi or Bengali language.

Overall, the script has a rich history spanning a thousand years, but years of neglect by Nepal and the Bihar government have taken their toll on the use of Tirhuta. Most speakers of Maithili have switched to using the Devanagari script, which is also used to write the neighboring Central Indic languages such as Nepali and Hindi. As a result, the number of people with a working knowledge of Tirhuta has dropped considerably in recent years.