Hindi pandits in Patna (हिन्दी)

Hindi in Patna

Hindi is the language a north Indian ritual is explained in rather than performed in. The sankalp names the family, the gotra, the place and the day, and it is said in Sanskrit; what the pandit tells you about it — why this step comes before that one, what the offering stands for, when to fold your hands — is Hindi.

It is also the language families fall back on when a household holds more than one mother tongue, which in a city is most households. A Maithili-speaking grandmother and a Bhojpuri-speaking son-in-law will both follow a katha read in Hindi.

Patna draws families from every district of Bihar, so its Hindi is the ground the city's households actually meet on rather than anybody's first language. A pandit working here is used to switching register mid-rite — the katha in Hindi, an aside to an elder in Magahi or Maithili — and does it without being asked.

The city's rites reflect the same mixture. A Patna griha pravesh may be conducted for a family whose village customs come from Saran and whose neighbours' come from Nalanda, and the pandit is the person who has to hold both without making either household feel corrected. Hindi is what that conversation happens in.