# The Language

 # The Language

Language is a structured system of communication. Languages evolve and diversify over time.

Indo-European languages, a family of languages with the greatest number of speakers, span areas of European settlement and much of southwestern and southern Asia. They descend from a single unrecorded language believed to have been spoken over 5,000 years ago in the steppe regions north of the Black Sea. By 3000 BCE, this language had split into several dialects. Migrating tribes carried these dialects to Europe and Asia, where they evolved into distinct languages. The main branches include Anatolian, Indo-Iranian (including Indo-Aryan and Iranian), Greek, Italic, Germanic, Armenian, Celtic, Albanian, Baltic, and Slavic. The study of Indo-European languages began in 1786 with Sir William Jones’s proposal that Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Germanic, and Celtic were all derived from a “common source.”

Indo-Aryan languages, or Indic languages, are spoken by over 800 million people, primarily in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The Old Indo-Aryan period is represented by Sanskrit. Middle Indo-Aryan (circa 600 BCE–1000 CE) includes the Prakrit dialects, such as Pali. Modern Indo-Aryan speech is largely a single dialect continuum spread over an undivided geographical area, making the distinctions between languages and dialects somewhat artificial.

In the Indo-Aryan speech area (the “Hindi zone”), covering northern India and extending south to Madhya Pradesh, the most common language of administration and education is Modern Standard Hindi. Important regional languages in the northern Indian plain include Haryanvi, Kauravi, Braj, Awadhi, Chhattisgarhi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, and Maithili. In Rajasthan, regional languages include Marwari, Dhundhari, Harauti, and Malvi. In the Himalayan foothills of Himachal Pradesh, Grierson’s Pahari languages are spoken. Surrounding the Hindi zone, the significant languages include Nepali (East Pahari), Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, and Dogri. The Dardic languages in Jammu and Kashmir and the far north of Pakistan include Kashmiri, Kohistani, Shina, and Khowar. The Nuristani languages of northwestern Afghanistan are sometimes considered a separate branch of Indo-Iranian. Sinhalese (spoken in Sri Lanka), Divehi (spoken in the Maldive Islands), and Romany are also Indo-Aryan languages.

The language of all the earliest records of India, whether literary or inscriptional, is Indo-European. The Aryan tribes, who for generations or even centuries swarmed over the mountain passes into Southern Afghanistan and the Punjab, or through the plains of Baluchistan into Sind and the Indus valley, likely spoke a variety of close dialects. Historical evidence shows that this is invariably the case among primitive peoples. Over time, as communities become settled and civilization advances, the dialect of a region that gains importance in religion, politics, or commerce gradually dominates others and becomes the standard language of educated people and literature.

In India, such a standard or literary language first appears in the Hymns of the Rig-Veda, dating from at least 1200 BCE. This 'Vedic' Sanskrit is the language of priestly poets from the region now known as Southern Afghanistan, the Northwestern Frontier Province, and Punjab, differing from the later Classical Sanskrit.

After the Vedic period, Aryan civilization extended south-easterly over the fertile plains of the Jumna and Ganges. This area became the chief political and religious center of Brahmanism and the birthplace of its rival religions, Jainism and Buddhism. The priestly treatises known as 'Brahmanas' and the epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, were composed in this region.

The language of these literary classes—the Brahmanas, representing the priestly caste, and the epic poems belonging chiefly to the warrior caste—is transitional between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. The Brahmanas’ Sanskrit gradually merges into Classical Sanskrit, while the epic language retains its archaic features and irregularities. By 500 CE, when Yaska's Nirukta, the first work in strictly Classical Sanskrit, appeared, there were three well-defined types of Sanskrit: the poetical language of early Aryan settlers, the language of bards, and the cultivated, literary language of the Brahmans.

Classical Sanskrit, fixed as a literary language, ceased to undergo material change while the centralization it represented continued. Its spoken form, however, varied according to the civilization level of each speaker or writer. While local dialects continued to evolve, the literary language remained essentially unaltered over nearly twenty-five centuries.

Local dialects, though fixed alongside the literary language, continued to evolve and grow independently. Inscriptions and coin legends of Ancient India illustrate this process: initially written in Prakrit, they gradually adopted Sanskrit as the dominant literary language by around 400 CE.

Sanskrit's history is closely associated with Brahmanism, much like Latin with the Roman Catholic Church. Jainism and Buddhism, however, revolted against the Brahman tradition of speech, leading to the development of Prakrit versions of Buddhist scriptures and the literary language Pali. Pali, the literary form of some Indian Prakrit, became the sacred language of Buddhism in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam. In India, by the fifth century CE, both Jain and Buddhist traditions increasingly used Sanskrit, which became the lingua franca of religion and learning across the continent.

The early literature of India and Ceylon, preserved in these languages, is vast and varied, covering almost every intellectual activity except for the sciences developed in the last 250 years. However, ancient Indian literature lacks the art of historical composition found in Greek and Latin classics. While it provides detailed records of daily life, social systems, religions, and progress in arts and sciences, it rarely mentions events or provides chronology. Dynastic lists, although present, are often inaccurate and discrepant, providing no fixed points for determining Indian chronology. This has led to significant errors in historical timelines based solely on these documents.

Ancient India has no historians comparable to Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Tacitus. Its literature offers rich materials to trace the cultural and intellectual life of its people but lacks a coherent historical record with a clear chronology.

Ref.

1.     Skeat, English Dialects, in the series of Cambridge Manuals.

2.     Vedic Sanskrit language | language | Britannica

3.     Indi European Languages-Wikipedia.