मैथिली साहित्यक इतिहास दय

Maithili has had a rich tradition of poetry and drama – especially the devotional poetry. The tradition of poetry that is possible to be rendered into songs  -evidenced  in the lyrics of bhajans or various  forms  of songs  –  was firmly established by the great Maithili  poets  of earlier  centuries  including Vidyapati,  Umapati,  Govinda  das, Mahesh Thakur, Chaturbhuj, Lochana, the Malla kings (Jagajjiyotimalla), Yoganarendramalla, Jagatprakashamalla,  Bhupatindramalla, or  Ranjit Malla and Chanda Jha continued further in the  modern era. By then the immortal songs of the poets of yester-years  had entered into repertoire of daily life of the common man and woman –  educated or illiterate. This surely was the taste of power  of  their  pen. The ‘Maithili Chrestomathy’ (1882) of George  Grierson or  his ’21 Vaishnava Hymes’ (1884) as well as two other  collections  published in the ’20s – Bhola Jha’s compilation:  “Maithilaa-giita-sangrah”  in  4 parts  (1917)  and  Laliteshwarasimha’s         edited  collections “Maithila bhaktaprakaasha” (1920), all  prove this  point  once again that the written  literature  was  indeed finding their way into oral traditions. The tradition was continued  by the later lyrical poets of Mithili in the ’30s and  ’40s, and even beyond the ’60s.