the language of Vedic literature -
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Answer:
Sanskrit language
Sanskrit language, (from Sanskrit saṃskṛta, “adorned, cultivated, purified”), an Old Indo-Aryan language in which the most ancient documents are the Vedas, composed in what is called Vedic Sanskrit.
Answer:
composed in what is called Vedic Sanskrit. Although Vedic documents represent the dialects then found in the northern midlands of the Indian subcontinent and areas immediately east thereof, the very earliest texts—including the Rigveda (“The Veda Composed in Verses”), which scholars generally ascribe to approximately 1500 BCE—stem from the northwestern…
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Indo-European languages in contemporary EurasiaIn Indo-European languages: Indo-Iranian
…an Indo-Aryan language is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda, the oldest of the sacred scriptures of India, dating roughly from 1000 BCE. Examples of modern Indo-Aryan languages are Hindi, Bengali, Sinhalese (spoken in Sri Lanka), and the many dialects of Romany, the language of the
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Indian languages
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Indian languages, languages spoken in the state of India, generally classified as belonging to the following families: Indo-European (the Indo-Iranian branch in particular), Dravidian, Austroasiatic (Munda in particular), and Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman in particular).
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Key People: William Carey Rin-chen-bzang-po Sir George Abraham Grierson Patanjali
Related Topics: Hindi language Sanskrit language Bengali language Punjabi language Sindhi language
Of the hundreds of languages spoken in India, 22 are mentioned in the constitution of India: Assamese, Bengali (Bangla), Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu all belong to the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European; Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu belong to the Dravidian language family; and, of the three remaining languages, Manipuri (Meitei), spoken in Manipur, and Bodo, spoken in northeastern India, are usually classified as belonging to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and Santali is classified as a Munda language. Except for the Khasian languages spoken in Meghalaya, northeastern India, and the Nicobarese languages, spoken in the Nicobar Islands in the Andaman Sea lying just to the northwest of the Indonesian island of Sumatra—both of which are classified within the Mon-Khmer subfamily of Austroasiatic—the other languages of the Austronesian family are spoken in Southeast Asia.
Mridanga; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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…India, Sanskrit was the chief language of Hindu cultural, learned, and religious expression, while Buddhism...
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn, Managing Editor, Reference Content.
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Mridanga; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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