BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 73 of 144

Correct — C, Karnat dynasty. The oldest surviving composition in Maithili was written at a Karnat court. The Karnats (Karnatas) of Mithila ruled Tirhut from 1097 to 1324 — the accession is fixed by the Simraungadh pillar inscription, which records that in the Shaka year 1019, on the seventh of Shravana under the Svati nakshatra, “king Nanyadeva took the land”, a date corresponding to 10 July 1097 CE. Their last ruler was Harisimhadeva (r. 1304–1324), and at his court served Jyotirishwar Kavishekharacharya, author of the Varna-ratnakara. Suniti Kumar Chatterji, editing the unique palm-leaf manuscript for the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1940, opens his introduction with the finding that settles this question: “The Varna-ratnakara is the oldest work in the Maithili language of North Bihar so far known, and it goes back to the 1st half, perhaps to the 1st quarter, of the 14th century.” The physical evidence is worth knowing, because it shows how such a date is reached. The single surviving manuscript is Government Collection No. 48/34 of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, written on palm leaf in old Maithili characters — leaves about fifteen inches long and under two inches broad, five lines to a page, originally 77 folios of which seventeen are lost. Its colophon dates the copy to the year 388 of the La Sam (Lakshmana Sena) era, which began in 1119 CE, and so to 1507 CE. The manuscript is therefore two centuries younger than the text, and the text is dated instead through its author: Jyotirishwar's Sanskrit farce Dhurtasamagama survives in the Nepal Durbar Library and was “composed by the same Jyotirisvara Kavisekhara during the reign of Harasimha Deva, the last of the Karnataka Kings of Mithila, whom Prof. Bendall placed in or about 1324.” The Varna-ratnakara itself is a prose work — a lexicon of vernacular and Sanskrit terms and a repository of literary similes and set descriptions, arranged in chapters called kallolas, “streams” or “waves”, because the book is a ratnakara or “sea”. Seven kallolas survive: a hero, a royal court, the gentle arts of poetry, a cremation ground with its Bhairavas, Yoginis and Vetalas. The eighth breaks off in mid-sentence while listing kinds of ships and boats. The Karnat kings styled themselves Mithileshwara, and Maithili is listed with Sanskrit among the languages of their court. That is the documentary basis for saying Maithili began to develop as a written language under the Karnats. Where the picture is finely balanced is dealt with in the background below, because the Oiniwars have a real claim of their own — but to a later stage of the same story.

• (a)Chero dynasty — The Cheros were a chieftaincy of Palamu, established there in 1572 by Bhagwant Rai and lasting until 1813, with earlier scattered principalities in Bhojpur, Saran, Champaran and Muzaffarpur. That is south and west Bihar — Bhojpuri and Magahi country, not Mithila — and the main Chero period is two and a half centuries later than the first Maithili book. The option is on the paper because BPSC likes to mix Bihar's regional dynasties together and see whether a candidate can place each in its own part of the state; geography rules this one out before any date is checked.
• (b)Oiniwar dynasty — The strongest distractor by far, and not an ignorant choice. The Oiniwars (c. 1325–c. 1526), founded by Kameshwar Thakur, are the dynasty under which Maithili reached its height — Vidyapati served seven of their kings and two queens, and the Oiniwar age is routinely called the epitome of the language. But they begin after the first Maithili book was already written, so they carried the language forward rather than starting it. Chatterji himself draws the line between the two stages in one sentence about the Varna-ratnakara: “This book seems to have guided the genius of Vidyapati.” The Karnats supplied the model; the Oiniwars supplied the masterpiece.
• (d)Pithipatis — The Pithipatis of Magadha (c. 1120–c. 1290) were Buddhist rulers based at Bodh Gaya — “Pithi” is the diamond throne of the Buddha's enlightenment — whose chiefs styled themselves Pithipati and Acharya, and one of whom, Buddhasena, called himself magadhadipati, lord of Magadha. Their territory and their patronage lay in south Bihar, and their literary language was Sanskrit and the Buddhist Apabhramsa of the Siddhas, not Maithili. They overlap the Karnats in time, which is what makes them look plausible in a list, but they are in the wrong region entirely.

Mithila, the plain between the Ganga and the Nepal hills, has its own literary history and its own dynastic sequence, and BPSC expects both. The Karnats took power in 1097 under Nanyadeva, who came from the Deccan — hence the dynastic name — and ruled from Nanapura and then Simraungadh, with Darbhanga as a second seat. Six kings followed in order: Nanyadeva 1097–1147, Gangadeva 1147–1187, Narsimhadeva 1187–1227, Ramasimhadeva 1227–1285, Shaktisimhadeva 1285–1304 and Harisimhadeva 1304–1324. Their court was the making of Mithila's classical learning: Chandeshvara Thakkura wrote his great smriti digests there and, by his own account, campaigned into Nepal for his king about 1314; the Panji genealogical registers of the Maithil Brahmans were begun under Harisimhadeva from the Shaka year 1232 (1311 CE); and Jyotirishwar produced the first book in the spoken language of the region. The dynasty's end is tangled, and the tangle is instructive. Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq invaded Tirhut in 1324; a traditional Mithila verse dates Harisimhadeva's retreat into the Nepal hills to Shaka 1245, that is 1323. But Chatterji points out that both Jyotirishwar's Dhurtasamagama and Chandeshvara's Dana-ratnakara describe the fight as having ended in the Hindu king's favour and were composed after it, so Harisimhadeva evidently recovered his kingdom, and Manomohan Chakravarti found the names of at least two more Karnat kings ruling in Mithila or part of it after him. When Karnat rule did lapse, power passed to the Brahman house of Kameshwar Thakur — the Oiniwar or Sugauna line — which held Mithila until about 1526.

The whole question is a chronology problem dressed as a literature problem, and the two dynasties that matter sit end to end: Karnat 1097–1324, Oiniwar c. 1325–c. 1526. Chero and Pithipati can be struck out on geography alone before any date is checked, because neither ruled Mithila — one belongs to Palamu and west Bihar, the other to Bodh Gaya in Magadha. That is the first move on any Bihar dynasty question: place each option on the map of the state before placing it on the timeline. The single discriminating fact is then the date of the Varna-ratnakara, placed by its editor in the first quarter of the fourteenth century and tied to Harisimhadeva's reign through the Dhurtasamagama, which Cecil Bendall dated at or about 1324 — inside Karnat rule, if only just. That leaves the honest difficulty, and this is a question where our answer is derived rather than taken from a published key, so the doubt is worth naming. “Started to develop” is a loose phrase. If it means the first attested composition, the answer is the Karnats. If it means the period in which Maithili became a major literary language, the answer is the Oiniwars: Chatterji himself writes that Kameshwar's house rose in the second half of the fourteenth century and that “Vidyapati, the greatest poet of Mithila, flourished under the family of Kamesvara” around 1400. We argue the Karnats because “started” points at the beginning and the first book falls on their side of the line — but a student should know the case is close, that a Maithili book and the fall of the Karnats are separated by about a year, and that the two answers are not really rivals so much as two points on one curve. Chatterji's own sentence about the Varna-ratnakara — that it “seems to have guided the genius of Vidyapati” — is the bridge between them.

• The Karnat dynasty of Mithila ruled 1097–1324; Nanyadeva's accession is dated 10 July 1097 CE from the Simraungadh pillar inscription (Shaka 1019, 7th of Shravana, Svati nakshatra)
• The Varna-ratnakara of Jyotirishwar Kavishekharacharya, written at the court of Harisimhadeva (r. 1304–1324), is the earliest known work in Maithili; its unique palm-leaf manuscript is Government Collection No. 48/34 of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, in old Maithili characters, 77 folios of which 17 are lost
• That manuscript's colophon dates the copy to year 388 of the La Sam (Lakshmana Sena) era, which began in 1119 CE — so 1507 CE; the text is dated instead through its author, whose Sanskrit farce Dhurtasamagama was written for the same king
• Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Babua Misra edited it as Bibliotheca Indica No. 262 for the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1940, calling it “the oldest work in the Maithili language of North Bihar so far known”; the book is prose, arranged in chapters called kallolas or “waves” because the work is a ratnakara or “sea”
• Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq invaded Tirhut in 1324 and Harisimhadeva withdrew into the Nepal hills, but the Dhurtasamagama and Chandeshvara's Dana-ratnakara were both written after the invasion was repulsed, and at least two further Karnat kings are recorded after him
• The Oiniwar (Sugauna) dynasty founded by Kameshwar Thakur ruled c. 1325–c. 1526 with capitals at Oini, Sugauna, Devakuli, Gajarathapur, Padma and Bisaul; Vidyapati served seven of its kings and two queens, and its king Kirtisimha commissioned his Kirtilata
• Maithili was added to the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution by the 92nd Amendment in 2003, alongside Bodo, Dogri and Santali, taking the list from 18 languages to 22

• Choosing the Oiniwars because Vidyapati is the name everyone associates with Maithili; Vidyapati is the language's peak around 1400, not its beginning
• Placing the Cheros or the Pithipatis in Mithila; the Cheros belong to Palamu and west Bihar and the Pithipatis to Bodh Gaya in Magadha
• Confusing Maithili's literary origins with its constitutional recognition — the 92nd Amendment of 2003, not the 71st of 1992, is the one that scheduled Maithili

BPSC treats Mithila's dynasties as core Bihar-specific ground and asks them as one-line attributions — which dynasty, which capital, which patron — where the marks turn on holding two adjacent dynasties apart and on knowing which corner of Bihar each ruled. UPSC almost never asks about the Karnats or Oiniwars at all; when Maithili appears in a UPSC paper it is a polity question about the Eighth Schedule and which amendment added it, as in 2008 and again in 2024. The two exams therefore test the same language from opposite ends of its history, and a Bihar aspirant needs 1324 and 2003 equally.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Varna-ratnakara, regarded as the earliest known work in the Maithili language, was composed by

  • (a)Vidyapati
  • (b)Jyotirishwar Kavishekharacharya
  • (c)Chandeshvara Thakkura
  • (d)Nanyadeva

  Answer(b) Jyotirishwar Kavishekharacharya — he wrote it in the early fourteenth century at the court of Harisimhadeva, the last Karnat ruler of Mithila; Chandeshvara was the same court's smriti scholar and Vidyapati came a lifetime later, under the Oiniwars.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The poet Vidyapati was associated with the court of which dynasty of Mithila?

  • (a)Karnat dynasty
  • (b)Pala dynasty
  • (c)Oiniwar dynasty
  • (d)Chero dynasty

  Answer(c) Oiniwar dynasty — Vidyapati served seven Oiniwar kings and two queens around 1400, and his Kirtilata was commissioned by the Oiniwar king Kirtisimha.