have long served as soldiers in the armies of Kings in Western regions of India. Mughal sources also record that many peasant soldiers were recruited from Northern parts of Bihar (Tirhut). In late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the middle peasant castes like Koeri, Kurmi and Yadav, also got recruitment in the British Indian Army as soldiers. According to William Pinch, specially after 1898, the social resurgence and claim for higher status in the social hierarchy, attracted the peasant communities towards the military service. The Bihari Soldiers of British army played a major role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against the British following the suppression of the uprising, British authorities decided not to recruit troops from Bihar. Then they decided to recruit troops from Sikh and Muslim Communities of the Punjab. This martial heritage continued into the late 20th century with the formation of private armies or senas that were formed to maintain the interests of specific castes. Servan-Schreiber described this martial tradition as follows: Clothing The traditional dress of Bihari people includes the dhoti-mirjai (a modified form of the flowing jama) or the kurta (replacing the older chapkan which is a robe fastened on the right or on the left) for men and Saree for women. In everyday life women wear saree or Salwar kameez. The saree is worn in "Seedha Aanchal" style traditionally. Nevertheless, Western shirts and trousers are becoming popular among both the rural and urban male population. And Salwar-Kameez for women in urban Bihar. Jewellery such as rings for men and bangles for women are popular. However, there are some traditional Bihari jewelries like "Chhara", "Hansuli", "Kamarbandh", etc. Language and literature Hindi is the official language of the State. Maithili (61 million speakers including Bajjika dialect which has 11 million speakers in India), and Urdu are other recognised languages of the state. Unrecognised languages of the state are Bhojpuri (60 million), Angika (30 million) and Magahi (20 million). Bhojpuri and Magahi are sociolinguistically a part of the Hindi Belt languages fold, thus they were not granted official status in the state.The number of speakers of the Bihari languages is difficult to count because of unreliable sources. In the urban region, most educated speakers of the language name Hindi as their language because this is what they use in formal contexts and believe it to be the appropriate response because of unawareness. The uneducated and the