The Prakrits continued to evolve through everyday use. Panini’s work is often compared to Euclid’s as an intellectual feat of systematization. By the fourth century B.C., these trends had culminated in the work of Panini, whose Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi (Eight Chapters), set the basic form of Sanskrit for subsequent generations. Concerns for the purity and correctness of Sanskrit gave rise to an elaborate science of grammar and phonetics and an alphabetical system seen by some scholars as superior to the Roman system. However, its use in ritual settings encouraged the retention of archaic forms lost in the Prakrits. By about the same time, the “sacred,” “polished,” or “pure” tongue–Sanskrit–used in religious rites had also developed along independent lines, changing significantly from the form used in the Vedas. By about 500 B.C., Prakrits, or “common” forms of speech, were widespread throughout the north. 1).Īs Indo-Aryan speakers spread across northern and central India, their languages experienced constant change and development. Over a period of centuries, Indo-Aryan languages came to predominate in the northern and central portions of South Asia (see Antecedents, ch. Modern linguistic knowledge of this process of assimilation comes through the Sanskrit language employed in the sacred literature known as the Vedas (see The Vedas and Polytheism, ch. Brought into India from the northwest during the second millennium B.C., the Indo-Aryan tongues spread throughout the north, gradually displacing the earlier languages of the area.
Persian and the languages of Afghanistan are close relatives, belonging, like the Indo-Aryan languages, to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. Indian Languages – About 80 percent of all Indians–nearly 750 million people based on 1995 population estimates–speak one of the Indo-Aryan group of languages.
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