Indic

The Indic, or Indo-Aryan, languages are the South Asian branch of Indo-Iranian within Indo-European, spoken from Bengal and the Deccan to Sri Lanka. Their oldest stage is Vedic Sanskrit, the language of the Rigveda and other Vedas composed from roughly 1500 BC.

Classical Sanskrit later became the language of religion, science and court literature, while the vernacular Prakrits went their own way. Pali became the language of the Buddhist canon, and the edicts of the emperor Ashoka in the third century BC carried a Prakrit across his empire.

Late Prakrits such as Apabhramsha, current from about 600 to 1400 AD, gave rise to New Indo-Aryan tongues, while Sinhala developed separately on Sri Lanka and Romani was carried to Europe by migrants from India. Under the Delhi sultanates, the Persianised register of Hindustani known as Urdu joined the Sanskritised register that became Hindi.