Maithili language is spoken in the eastern part of India, mainly in Bihar, U.P, Jharkhand and parts of W.B, with cultural and linguistic centers in the cities of Madhubani and Darbahnga. Maithili is also spoken in the terai region of Nepal. According to the 2001 census in India, 12,179,122 people speak Maithili, but various organizations have strongly argued that the actual number of Maithili speakers is much higher than the official data suggests. SIL estimates it to be more than 35 Million. . Maithili has a very rich literary and cultural heritage.
Maithili was traditionally written in the Maithili script and Kaithi script. Nowadays, Devanagari Script is most commonly used. An effort is underway to preserve the Maithili script and to develop it for use in digital media by encoding the script in the Unicode standard, for which proposals have been submitted.
The term Maithili comes from mithila, which was an independent state in ancient times. Mithila has a very important place in Hindumythology, since it is regarded as the birth place of Goddess Sita, the daughter of King Janak of Mithila; who eventually gets married to Lord Rama.
