Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east of the Indus River in South Asia, spread across Eastern Pakistan, Northern India, southern Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Maldives.[1]
Moreover, apart from the Indian subcontinent, large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan–speaking communities live in many other regions of the world. There are over 200 known Indo-Aryan languages.[2]
Modern Indo-Aryan languages descend from Old Indo-Aryan languages such as early Vedic Sanskrit, Sanskrit through Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Prakrits).[3][4][5][6] The largest such languages in terms of first-speakers are Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu) (c. 330 million),[7] Bengali (242 million),[8] Punjabi (about 150 million),[9] Marathi (112 million), and Gujarati (60 million).
Historical variants
Old Indo-Aryan
The earliest evidence of the group is from Vedic Sanskrit, that is used in the ancient preserved texts of the Indian subcontinent, the foundational canon of the Hindu synthesis known as the Vedas. The Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni is of similar age to the language of the Rigveda, but the only evidence of it is a few proper names and specialised loanwords.[10]
While Old Indo-Aryan is the earliest stage of the Indo-Aryan branch, from which all known languages of the later stages Middle and New Indo-Aryan are derived, some documented Middle Indo-Aryan variants cannot fully be derived from the documented form of Old Indo-Aryan (on which Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are based), but betray features that must go back to other undocumented dialects of Old Indo-Aryan.[11]
From Vedic Sanskrit, "Sanskrit" (literally 'put together, perfected, elaborated') developed as the prestige language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre, etc. Sanskrit of the later Vedic texts is comparable to Classical Sanskrit, but is largely mutually unintelligible with Vedic Sanskrit.[12]
Middle Indo-Aryan (Prakrits)
Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects (Prakrits) continued to evolve. The oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, respectively. Inscriptions in Ashokan Prakrit were also part of this early Middle Indo-Aryan stage, developing into Gandhari Prakrit and Monumental Prakrit.
By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan languages. Apabhraṃśa is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indo-Aryan with early Modern Indo-Aryan, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production; the Śravakacāra of Devasena (dated to the 930s) is now considered to be the first book written in Hindi.
The next major milestone occurred with the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing Turco-Mongol Mughal Empire, Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts due to adoption of the foreign language by the Mughal emperors.
The largest languages that formed from Apabhraṃśa were Bengali, Bhojpuri, Hindustani, Assamese, Sindhi, Gujarati, Odia, Marathi, and Punjabi.
Other variants
See:
Indo-Aryan languages, Wikipedia
Further reading
- Indo-Aryan languages, Wikipedia
Notes
- ↑ "Overview of Indo-Aryan languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 8 July 2018.
- ↑ Various counts depend on where the line is drawn between a "dialect" and a "language". Glottolog 4.1 lists 224 languages.
- ↑ Burde, Jayant (2004). Rituals, Mantras, and Science: An Integral Perspective. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. p. 3. ISBN 978-81-208-2053-1.
The Aryans spoke an Indo-European language sometimes called the Vedic language from which have descended Sanskrit and other Indic languages ... Prakrit was a group of variants which developed alongside Sanskrit.
- ↑ Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (26 July 2007). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 163.
... a number of their morphophonological and lexical features betray the fact that they are not direct continuations of R̥gvedic Sanskrit, the main base of 'Classical' Sanskrit; rather they descend from dialects which, despite many similarities, were different from R̥gvedic and in some regards even more archaic.
- ↑ Chamber's Encyclopaedia, Volume 7. International Learnings Systems. 1968.
Most Aryan languages of India and Pakistan belong to the Indo-Aryan family, and are descended from Sanskrit through the intermediate stage of Prakrit. The Indo-Aryan languages are by far the most important numerically and the territory occupied by them extends over the whole of northern and central India and reaches as far south as Goa.
- ↑ Donkin, R. A. (2003). Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices Up to the Arrival of Europeans. American Philosophical Society. p. 60. ISBN 9780871692481.
The modern, regional Indo-Aryan languages developed from Prakrt, an early 'unrefined' (prakrta) form of Sanskrit, around the close of the first millennium A.D.
- ↑ Standard Hindi first language: 260.3 million (2001), as second language: 120 million (1999). Urdu L1: 68.9 million (2001–2014), L2: 94 million (1999): Ethnologue 19.
- ↑ Bengali or Bangla-Bhasa, L1: 242.3 million (2011), L2: 19.2 million (2011), Ethnologue
- ↑ "Punjabi speaking countries". WorldData.info.
- ↑ Parpola, Asko (2015). The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and The Indus Civilization. Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Oberlies, Thomas (2007). "Chapter Five: Aśokan Prakrit and Pāli". In Cardona, George; Jain, Danesh. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 179. ISBN 9781135797119.
- ↑ Gombrich, Richard (14 April 2006). Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo. Routledge. p. 24.
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