Brajabuli

Not to be confused with Brajavali dialect.

Brajabuli is an artificial literary language popularized by the Maithili poet Vidyapati.^[1][2] His Brajabuli lyrics about the love for Radha Krishna is considered to his best of works.^[3] Other poets emulated his writing, and the language became established in the 16th century.^[1][2] Among the medieval Bengali poets who wrote in Brajabuli are Narottama Dasa, Balarama Das, Jnanadas, and Gobindadas Kabiraj.^[4]

Brajabuli
ব্রজবুলি
Created by	Vidyapati
Date	16th century
Extinct	unknown
Purpose	Constructed language Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Eastern Zone (Magadhan) Maithili and Bengali Brajabuli
Writing system	Bangla, Tirhuta
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None
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Rabindranath Tagore also composed his Bhanusimha Thakurer Padavali (1884) in this language (he initially promoted these lyrics as those of a newly discovered poet, Bhanusingha).^[3] Other 19th century figures in the Bengal Renaissance, such as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, have also written in Brajabuli.^[4] The extant Brajabuli literature consists of about 5,000 poems.^[5]

Brajabuli is basically Maithili (as prevalent during the medieval period), but its forms are modified to look like Bengali.^[1]

See also

• Brajavali dialect – another literary language based on Maithili