Awadhi

Awadhi, also known as Audhi, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family, spoken in the Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh in northern India and in the Terai region of western Nepal. Its name comes from Ayodhya, the ancient city regarded in Hindu tradition as the homeland of the deity Rama. Awadhi is also spoken, along with Bhojpuri, among the diaspora descended from Indians who left as indentured labourers during the colonial era. Along with Braj, it served as a major literary language before being displaced by Hindi in the 19th century, and it continues to be spoken today in its own form across many districts of central and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Within this atlas it is treated as a dialect and variety of Hindi, one of several classification debates the atlas records rather than resolves; some linguists classify Awadhi as a separate language in its own right.