 It is believed to be the language spoken by the important religious figures Gautama Buddha and Mahavira and was also the language of the courts of the Magadha mahajanapada and the Maurya Empire; some of the Edicts of Ashoka were composed in it.Magadhi Prakrit later evolved into the Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, including the Bengali–Assamese languages (Assamese, Bengali, Rangpuri, Chakma, Chittagonian, Rohingya, Sylheti and others), Bihari languages (Magahi, Maithili and others), and Odia, among others.Out of all of its offshoots, Bengali is the most spoken, with over 240 million speakers, followed by Odia and Maithili (both with over 40 million speakers),followed by Magahi with over 20.7 million,as well as Bhojpuri (with over 50 million speakers)