Maithil society is a dense weave of communities, each with its own surnames, callings and customs — and an unusually careful memory of lineage, kept in the Panji genealogical records.
The Maithil Brahmins are most associated with the region’s scholarly fame, carrying surnames such as Jha, Mishra, Thakur, Choudhary, Pathak, Ojha and Sharma. Their families are sorted by mul (an ancestral village) and gotra, and ranked in traditional grades — Shrotriya, Yogya and Jaibar — that the Panjikars consult before a marriage. Alongside them, the Karna (Maithil) Kayasthas — the old administrative and writerly class — bear names like Das, Sinha, Mallick, Karn, Lal, Sahay, Nidhi and Choudhary, and produced much of Mithila’s officialdom and many of its writers.
But Mithila is far more than its two literate castes. Its life rests equally on the Yadav (Gwala) herders; the Koiri/Kushwaha and Kurmi cultivators; the Mallah/Sahani boatmen and fishermen of its rivers and ponds; the Kumhar potters who shape the Sama-Chakeva birds; the Teli, Kanu, Nai, Dhobi, Kamar and other artisan communities; and the Dusadh, Musahar, Paswan and Chamar Dalit communities, whose own heroes — above all Raja Salhesh — and whose Godna painting are central to Mithila’s culture. Together these communities, Hindu and Muslim alike, make the single Maithil-speaking society that fills the villages of north Bihar and the Madhesh.