Magahi

The Magahi people occupy the old heartland of Magadha south of the Ganges, seat of India's earliest great empires. Their language, Magahi or Magadhi, is an Eastern Indo-Aryan tongue descended from Magadhi Prakrit, taking distinct shape between the eighth and eleventh centuries; formerly written in Kaithi and later mainly in Devanagari, it has lived on chiefly through folk songs and the epic ballads of strolling bards.

Magadha's Haryanka kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru ruled from Rajgir and later Pataliputra, founded in 490 BCE and later the capital of the Nanda, Maurya and Gupta empires; the Buddha attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya.

After the Buddhist Pithipati lords, the region fell to Turkic conquest under Bakhtiyar Khalji and passed to the Delhi sultanate. Sher Shah Suri, born in Bihar, built the Sur Empire in 1540; Akbar took Patna in 1574, and after Buxar in 1764 the East India Company acquired the province.