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Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit

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Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan
Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...

 language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan
Avestan language
Avestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...

, the oldest preserved Iranian language. Vedic Sanskrit is the oldest attested language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

.

The languages descending from Vedic or sister dialects include Kashmiri, Pahari or Pahari Punjabi, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Multani, Hariyanwi, Hindustani, Marwari, Dhundharu, Miwati, Haraoti, Mewari, Malwi, Kacchi, Kathiawari, Gujarati
Gujarati language
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...

, Marathi, Khandeshi, Niwari, Barari, Konkani, Garhwali, Kumayuni, Brajabhasa, Awadhi, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chattisgari, Halwi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Nagpuri or Sadri or Sadani, Sambalpuri, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Angika, Maethilii, Gorkhali (Nepali) and Assamese. Telugu
Telugu language
Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...

, which is an ancient Dravidian Language was influenced by many words of Sanskrit, due to Aryan invasion.

Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas
Vedas
The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....

, texts compiled over the period of early-to-mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE. Vedic Sanskrit has been orally
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

 preserved as a part of the Śrauta
Srauta
' traditions are conservative ritualistic traditions of the historical Vedic religion in Hinduism, based on the body of Śruti literature...

 tradition of Vedic chant
Vedic chant
The oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer...

ing, predating the advent of alphabetic writing in India
Brāhmī script
Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...

 by several centuries. For lack of both epigraphic evidence and an unbroken manuscript tradition, Vedic Sanskrit can be considered a reconstructed language. Especially the oldest stage of the language, Rigvedic Sanskrit, the language of the hymns of the Rigveda
Rigveda
The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...

, is preserved only in a redacted form several centuries younger than the texts' composition, and recovering its original form is a matter of linguistic reconstruction.

From ca. 600 BCE, in the classical period of Iron Age
Iron Age India
Iron Age India, the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent, succeeds the Late Harappan culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition...

 Ancient India
History of India
The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...

, Vedic Sanskrit gave way to Classical Sanskrit as defined by the grammar of .

Prehistoric derivation


In spite of being comparatively close to the reconstructed form of Proto-Indo-Iranian, Vedic Sanskrit is already clearly marked as a language of the Indic group.
Among the phonological changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian is the loss of the /z/ and /ž/ phonemes, and the introduction of a series of retroflex stops. For example, Proto-Indo-Iranian *nižda- "nest" gives Vedic "resting-place, seat, abode", involving both the loss of (accompanied with a lengthening of the *i to ) and the substitution of the retroflex for*d .
On the side of vocabulary, Rigvedic Sanskrit shows a considerable number of loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

s taken from an indigenous Indian source. This substratum influence
Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically, the formation of gerunds; and syntactically, the use of a quotative...

 on early Vedic Sanskrit also extends to phonetic, morphological and syntactical features, and is variously traced to the Dravidian or Munda language families.

The separation of Indo-Aryans
Indo-Aryans
Indo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...

 proper from the undifferentiated Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestor group is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 1800 BCE. The composition of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda is dated to several centuries after this division, or to roughly 1500 BCE. Both Asko Parpola (1988) and J.P. Mallory (1998) place the locus of the division of Indo-Aryan from Iranian in the Bronze Age BMAC culture. Parpola (1999) elaborates the model and has "Proto-Rigvedic" Indo-Aryans intrude the BMAC around 1700 BCE. He assumes early Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Harappan horizon from about 1900 BCE, and "Proto-Rigvedic" (Proto-Dardic) intrusion to the Punjab as corresponding to the Swat culture from about 1700 BCE. According to this model, Rigvedic Sanskrit within the larger Indo-Aryan group is the direct ancestor of the Dardic languages
Dardic languages
The Dardic languages are a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir...

.
The hymns of the Rigveda are thus composed in a liturgical language which was based on the natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...

 spoke in Gandhara
Gandhara
Gandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...

 during the early phase of the Swat culture, at the end of the Indian Bronze Age. This liturgical language over the following centuries came to be separated from spoken vernaculars and came to be known as the "artificial" or "elaborated" (saṃskṛta) language, contrasted to the "natural" or "unrefined" prākṛta
Prakrit
Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...

vernaculars by the end of the Vedic period.

Chronology


Five chronologically distinct strata can be identified within the Vedic language (Witzel 1989).
  1. Rigvedic The
    Vedic Sanskrit (c. 2000 BC – c. 600 BC) is an old
    Indo-Aryan
    Indo-Aryan languages
    The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...

     language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit
    Sanskrit
    Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

    , an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan
    Avestan language
    Avestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...

    , the oldest preserved Iranian language. Vedic Sanskrit is the oldest attested language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family
    Indo-European languages
    The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

    .

    The languages descending from Vedic or sister dialects include Kashmiri, Pahari or Pahari Punjabi, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Multani, Hariyanwi, Hindustani, Marwari, Dhundharu, Miwati, Haraoti, Mewari, Malwi, Kacchi, Kathiawari, Gujarati
    Gujarati language
    Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...

    , Marathi, Khandeshi, Niwari, Barari, Konkani, Garhwali, Kumayuni, Brajabhasa, Awadhi, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chattisgari, Halwi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Nagpuri or Sadri or Sadani, Sambalpuri, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Angika, Maethilii, Gorkhali (Nepali) and Assamese. Telugu
    Telugu language
    Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...

    , which is an ancient Dravidian Language was influenced by many words of Sanskrit, due to Aryan invasion.

    Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas
    Vedas
    The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....

    , texts compiled over the period of early-to-mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE. Vedic Sanskrit has been orally
    Oral tradition
    Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

     preserved as a part of the Śrauta
    Srauta
    ' traditions are conservative ritualistic traditions of the historical Vedic religion in Hinduism, based on the body of Śruti literature...

     tradition of Vedic chant
    Vedic chant
    The oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer...

    ing, predating the advent of alphabetic writing in India
    Brāhmī script
    Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...

     by several centuries. For lack of both epigraphic evidence and an unbroken manuscript tradition, Vedic Sanskrit can be considered a reconstructed language. Especially the oldest stage of the language, Rigvedic Sanskrit, the language of the hymns of the Rigveda
    Rigveda
    The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...

    , is preserved only in a redacted form several centuries younger than the texts' composition, and recovering its original form is a matter of linguistic reconstruction.

    From ca. 600 BCE, in the classical period of Iron Age
    Iron Age India
    Iron Age India, the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent, succeeds the Late Harappan culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition...

     Ancient India
    History of India
    The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...

    , Vedic Sanskrit gave way to Classical Sanskrit as defined by the grammar of {{IAST|Pāṇini}}.

    Prehistoric derivation


    {{see|Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit}}

    In spite of being comparatively close to the reconstructed form of Proto-Indo-Iranian, Vedic Sanskrit is already clearly marked as a language of the Indic group.
    Among the phonological changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian is the loss of the /z/ and /ž/ phonemes, and the introduction of a series of retroflex stops. For example, Proto-Indo-Iranian *nižda- "nest" gives Vedic {{IAST|nīḍa-}} "resting-place, seat, abode", involving both the loss of (accompanied with a lengthening of the *i to {{IAST|ī}}) and the substitution of the retroflex {{IAST|ḍ}} for*d .
    On the side of vocabulary, Rigvedic Sanskrit shows a considerable number of loanword
    Loanword
    A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

    s taken from an indigenous Indian source. This substratum influence
    Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit
    Vedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically, the formation of gerunds; and syntactically, the use of a quotative...

     on early Vedic Sanskrit also extends to phonetic, morphological and syntactical features, and is variously traced to the Dravidian or Munda language families.

    The separation of Indo-Aryans
    Indo-Aryans
    Indo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...

     proper from the undifferentiated Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestor group is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 1800 BCE. The composition of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda is dated to several centuries after this division, or to roughly 1500 BCE. Both Asko Parpola (1988) and J.P. Mallory (1998) place the locus of the division of Indo-Aryan from Iranian in the Bronze Age BMAC culture. Parpola (1999) elaborates the model and has "Proto-Rigvedic" Indo-Aryans intrude the BMAC around 1700 BCE. He assumes early Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Harappan horizon from about 1900 BCE, and "Proto-Rigvedic" (Proto-Dardic) intrusion to the Punjab as corresponding to the Swat culture from about 1700 BCE. According to this model, Rigvedic Sanskrit within the larger Indo-Aryan group is the direct ancestor of the Dardic languages
    Dardic languages
    The Dardic languages are a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir...

    .
    The hymns of the Rigveda are thus composed in a liturgical language which was based on the natural language
    Natural language
    In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...

     spoke in Gandhara
    Gandhara
    Gandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...

     during the early phase of the Swat culture, at the end of the Indian Bronze Age. This liturgical language over the following centuries came to be separated from spoken vernaculars and came to be known as the "artificial" or "elaborated" (saṃskṛta) language, contrasted to the "natural" or "unrefined" prākṛta
    Prakrit
    Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...

    vernaculars by the end of the Vedic period.

    Chronology


    Five chronologically distinct strata can be identified within the Vedic language (Witzel 1989).
    1. Rigvedic The
      Vedic Sanskrit (c. 2000 BC – c. 600 BC) is an old
      Indo-Aryan
      Indo-Aryan languages
      The Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...

       language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit
      Sanskrit
      Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

      , an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan
      Avestan language
      Avestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...

      , the oldest preserved Iranian language. Vedic Sanskrit is the oldest attested language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family
      Indo-European languages
      The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

      .

      The languages descending from Vedic or sister dialects include Kashmiri, Pahari or Pahari Punjabi, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Multani, Hariyanwi, Hindustani, Marwari, Dhundharu, Miwati, Haraoti, Mewari, Malwi, Kacchi, Kathiawari, Gujarati
      Gujarati language
      Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...

      , Marathi, Khandeshi, Niwari, Barari, Konkani, Garhwali, Kumayuni, Brajabhasa, Awadhi, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chattisgari, Halwi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Nagpuri or Sadri or Sadani, Sambalpuri, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Angika, Maethilii, Gorkhali (Nepali) and Assamese. Telugu
      Telugu language
      Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...

      , which is an ancient Dravidian Language was influenced by many words of Sanskrit, due to Aryan invasion.

      Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas
      Vedas
      The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....

      , texts compiled over the period of early-to-mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE. Vedic Sanskrit has been orally
      Oral tradition
      Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

       preserved as a part of the Śrauta
      Srauta
      ' traditions are conservative ritualistic traditions of the historical Vedic religion in Hinduism, based on the body of Śruti literature...

       tradition of Vedic chant
      Vedic chant
      The oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer...

      ing, predating the advent of alphabetic writing in India
      Brāhmī script
      Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...

       by several centuries. For lack of both epigraphic evidence and an unbroken manuscript tradition, Vedic Sanskrit can be considered a reconstructed language. Especially the oldest stage of the language, Rigvedic Sanskrit, the language of the hymns of the Rigveda
      Rigveda
      The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...

      , is preserved only in a redacted form several centuries younger than the texts' composition, and recovering its original form is a matter of linguistic reconstruction.

      From ca. 600 BCE, in the classical period of Iron Age
      Iron Age India
      Iron Age India, the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent, succeeds the Late Harappan culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition...

       Ancient India
      History of India
      The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...

      , Vedic Sanskrit gave way to Classical Sanskrit as defined by the grammar of {{IAST|Pāṇini}}.

      Prehistoric derivation


      {{see|Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit}}

      In spite of being comparatively close to the reconstructed form of Proto-Indo-Iranian, Vedic Sanskrit is already clearly marked as a language of the Indic group.
      Among the phonological changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian is the loss of the /z/ and /ž/ phonemes, and the introduction of a series of retroflex stops. For example, Proto-Indo-Iranian *nižda- "nest" gives Vedic {{IAST|nīḍa-}} "resting-place, seat, abode", involving both the loss of (accompanied with a lengthening of the *i to {{IAST|ī}}) and the substitution of the retroflex {{IAST|ḍ}} for*d .
      On the side of vocabulary, Rigvedic Sanskrit shows a considerable number of loanword
      Loanword
      A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

      s taken from an indigenous Indian source. This substratum influence
      Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit
      Vedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically, the formation of gerunds; and syntactically, the use of a quotative...

       on early Vedic Sanskrit also extends to phonetic, morphological and syntactical features, and is variously traced to the Dravidian or Munda language families.

      The separation of Indo-Aryans
      Indo-Aryans
      Indo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...

       proper from the undifferentiated Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestor group is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 1800 BCE. The composition of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda is dated to several centuries after this division, or to roughly 1500 BCE. Both Asko Parpola (1988) and J.P. Mallory (1998) place the locus of the division of Indo-Aryan from Iranian in the Bronze Age BMAC culture. Parpola (1999) elaborates the model and has "Proto-Rigvedic" Indo-Aryans intrude the BMAC around 1700 BCE. He assumes early Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Harappan horizon from about 1900 BCE, and "Proto-Rigvedic" (Proto-Dardic) intrusion to the Punjab as corresponding to the Swat culture from about 1700 BCE. According to this model, Rigvedic Sanskrit within the larger Indo-Aryan group is the direct ancestor of the Dardic languages
      Dardic languages
      The Dardic languages are a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir...

      .
      The hymns of the Rigveda are thus composed in a liturgical language which was based on the natural language
      Natural language
      In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...

       spoke in Gandhara
      Gandhara
      Gandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...

       during the early phase of the Swat culture, at the end of the Indian Bronze Age. This liturgical language over the following centuries came to be separated from spoken vernaculars and came to be known as the "artificial" or "elaborated" (saṃskṛta) language, contrasted to the "natural" or "unrefined" prākṛta
      Prakrit
      Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...

      vernaculars by the end of the Vedic period.

      Chronology


      Five chronologically distinct strata can be identified within the Vedic language (Witzel 1989).
      1. Rigvedic The {{IAST
        Rigveda
        The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...

         retains many common Indo-Iranian
        Indo-Iranians
        Indo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family....

         elements, both in language and in content, that are not present in any other Vedic texts. Its creation must have taken place over several centuries, and apart from the latest books (1 and 10), it must have been essentially complete by around 1200 BCE
        12th century BC
        -Overview:The 12th century BC is the period from 1200 to 1101 BC. Although many human societies were literate in this period, most individual persons mentioned in this article ought to be considered legendary rather than historical...

        .
      2. Mantra language This period includes both the mantra and prose language of the Atharvaveda
        Atharvaveda
        The Atharvaveda is a sacred text of Hinduism and one of the four Vedas, often called the "fourth Veda"....

         (Paippalada and Shaunakiya), the Rigveda Khilani
        Khilani
        The Khilani are a collection of 98 "apocryphal" hymns of the Rigveda, recorded in the , but not in the shakha. They are late additions to the text of the Rigveda, but still belong to the "Mantra" period of Vedic Sanskrit.-Literature:...

        , the Samaveda
        Samaveda
        The Sama veda , is second of the four Vedas, the ancient core Hindu scriptures. Its earliest parts are believed to date from 1700 BC and it ranks next in sanctity and liturgical importance to the Rigveda...

         Samhita (containing some 75 mantras not in the Rigveda), and the mantras of the Yajurveda
        Yajurveda
        The Yajurveda, a tatpurusha compound of "sacrificial formula', + ) is the third of the four canonical texts of Hinduism, the Vedas. By some, it is estimated to have been composed between 1400 and 1000 BC, the Yajurveda 'Samhita', or 'compilation', contains the liturgy needed to perform the...

        . These texts are largely derived from the Rigveda, but have undergone certain changes, both by linguistic change and by reinterpretation. Conspicuous changes include change of {{IAST|viśva}} "all" to {{IAST|sarva}}, and the spread of {{IAST|kuru-}} (for Rigvedic {{IAST|kṛno-}}) as the present tense form of the verb {{IAST|kar-}} "make, do". This period corresponds to the early Iron Age
        Iron Age
        The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

         in north-western India (iron is first mentioned in the Atharvaveda), and to the kingdom of the Kurus, dating from about the twelfth century BCE.
      3. Samhita prose (roughly 1100 BCE to 800 BCE). This period marks the beginning collection and codification of a Vedic canon. An important linguistic change is the complete loss of the injunctive
        Injunctive mood
        The injunctive mood was a mood in Sanskrit characterized by secondary endings but no augment, and usually looked like an augmentless aorist or imperfect. It typically stood in a main clause and had a subjunctive or imperative meaning; for example, it could indicate intention, e.g. "Indra's heroic...

         and of the grammatical mood
        Grammatical mood
        In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...

        s of the aorist
        Aorist
        Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...

        . The commentary part of the Black Yajurveda (MS, KS) belongs to this period.
      4. Brahmana prose (roughly 900 BCE to 600 BCE) The Brahmanas proper of the four Vedas belong to this period, as well as the Aranyakas ({{IAST|Āraṇyakas}}) oldest of the Upanishad
        Upanishad
        The Upanishads are philosophical texts considered to be an early source of Hindu religion. More than 200 are known, of which the first dozen or so, the oldest and most important, are variously referred to as the principal, main or old Upanishads...

        s (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
        Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
        The Upanishad is one of the older, "primary" Upanishads. It is contained within the Shatapatha Brahmana, and its status as an independent Upanishad may be considered a secondary extraction of a portion of the Brahmana text. This makes it one of the oldest texts of the Upanishad corpus...

        , Chāndogya Upanishad
        Chandogya Upanishad
        The Chandogya Upanishad is one of the "primary" Upanishads. Together with the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad it ranks among the oldest Upanishads, dating to the Vedic Brahmana period....

        , Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana
        Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana
        The Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana or the Talavakara Upanishad Brahmana is a Vedic text associated with the Jaiminiya or the Talavakara shakha of the Samaveda. It is considered as an Aranyaka. A part of this text forms the Kena Upanishad...

        ).
      5. Sutra language This is the last stratum of vedic Sanskrit leading up to 500 BCE, comprising the bulk of the Shrauta and Grhya Sutras, and some Upanishads (E.g. Katha Upanishad
        Katha Upanishad
        The Katha Upanishad , also titled "Death as Teacher", is one of the mukhya Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. It is associated with the school of the Black Yajurveda, and is grouped with the Sutra period of Vedic Sanskrit. It is a middle Upanishad...

        , Maitrayaniya Upanishad
        Maitrayaniya Upanishad
        The Maitrayaniya Upanishad or the Maitri Upanishad belongs to the Maitri or Maitrayaniya shakha of the , though some texts assign it to the . It figures as number 24 in the Muktika canon of 108 Upanishads under the name of the Upanishad, which is included there as a Upanishad, associated with...

        . Younger Upanishads are post-Vedic).


      Around 500 BCE, cultural, political and linguistic factors all contribute to the end of the Vedic period. The codification of Vedic ritual reached its peak, and counter movements such as the Vedanta
      Vedanta
      Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...

       and early Buddhism
      Buddhism
      Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

       emerged, using the vernacular Pali
      Páli
      - External links :* *...

      , a Prakrit
      Prakrit
      Prakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...

       dialect, rather than Sanskrit for their texts. Darius I of Persia
      Darius I of Persia
      Darius I , also known as Darius the Great, was the third king of kings of the Achaemenid Empire...

       invaded the Indus valley and the political center of the Indo-Aryan kingdoms shifted eastward, to the Gangetic plain. Around this time (4th century BCE), Panini fixes the grammar of Classical Sanskrit.

      Phonology

      This section treats the distinguishing features of Vedic Sanskrit — see Classical Sanskrit for a general account.


      Sound changes between Proto-Indo-Iranian and Vedic Sanskrit include loss of the voiced sibilant z.

      Vedic Sanskrit had a bilabial fricative
      Voiceless bilabial fricative
      -See also:* List of phonetics topics...

       [ɸ], called {{IAST|upadhmānīya}}, and a velar fricative [x], called {{IAST|jihvamuliya}}. These are both allophones of visarga
      Visarga
      Visarga is a Sanskrit word meaning "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology , is the name of a phone, , written as IAST , Harvard-Kyoto , Devanagari . Visarga is an allophone of and in pausa...

      : upadhmaniya occurs before {{IAST|p}} and {{IAST|ph}}, jihvamuliya before {{IAST|k}} and {{IAST|kh}}. Vedic also had a retroflex l for retroflex l{{Clarify|reason=TAUTOLOGY?|date=August 2010}}, an intervocalic allophone of {{IAST|ḍ}}, represented in Devanagari
      Devanagari
      Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...

       with the separate symbol {{Unicode|ळ}} and transliterated as {{IAST|ḷ}} or {{IAST|ḷh}}. In order to disambiguate vocalic l from retroflex l, ISO 15919
      ISO 15919
      ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001...

       transliterates vocalic l with a ring below the letter, {{Unicode|l̥}}. (Vocalic r is then also represented with a ring, {{Unicode|r̥}}, for consistency and to disambiguate it additionally from the retroflex {{Unicode|ṛ}} and {{Unicode|ṛh}} of some modern Indian languages.)

      Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent
      Pitch accent
      Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...

      . Since a small number of words in the late pronunciation of Vedic carry the so-called "independent svarita" on a short vowel, one can argue that late Vedic was marginally a tonal language
      Tone (linguistics)
      Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

      . Note however that in the metrically restored versions of the Rig Veda almost all of the syllables carrying an independent svarita must revert to a sequence of two syllables, the first of which carries an udātta and the second a (so called) dependent svarita. Early Vedic was thus definitely not a tonal language but a pitch accent language. See Vedic accent
      Vedic accent
      The tone accent of Vedic Sanskrit, or Vedic accent for brevity, is traditionally divided by Sanskrit grammarians into three qualities, udātta "raised" , anudātta "not raised" and svarita "sounded" .-The accents:Udātta marks the place of the inherited PIE accent...

      .

      {{IAST gives accent rules for the spoken language of his (post-Vedic) time, though there is no extant post-Vedic text with accents.

      The pluti
      Pluti
      Pluti is the term for overlong vowels in Sanskrit. Pluti vowels are usually noted with a numeral "3" , , also ....

       vowels (trimoraic
      Mora (linguistics)
      Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...

       vowels) were on the verge of becoming phonological during middle Vedic, but disappeared again.

      Principal differences from Classical Sanskrit


      Vedic Sanskrit differs from Classical Sanskrit to an extent comparable to the difference between Homeric Greek
      Homeric Greek
      Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in...

       and Classical Greek. Tiwari ([1955] 2005) lists the following principal differences between the two:
      • Vedic Sanskrit had a voiceless bilabial fricative
        Voiceless bilabial fricative
        -See also:* List of phonetics topics...

         (/ɸ/, called upadhmānīya) and a voiceless velar fricative
        Voiceless velar fricative
        The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English....

         (/x/, called jihvāmūlīya)—which used to occur when the breath visarga (अः) appeared before voiceless labial and velar consonants respectively. Both of them were lost in Classical Sanskrit to give way to the simple visarga.
      • Vedic Sanskrit had a retroflex lateral approximant (/ɭ/) (ळ) as well as its aspirated counterpart /ɭʰ/ (ळ्ह), which were lost in Classical Sanskrit, to be replaced with the corresponding plosives /ɖ/ (ड) and /ɖʱ/ (ढ). (Varies by region; Vedic pronunciations are still in common use in some regions, e.g. southern India, including Maharashtra.)
      • The pronunciations of syllabic /ɻ̩/ (ऋ), /l̩/ (लृ) and their long counterparts no longer retained their pure pronunciations, but had started to be pronounced as short and long /ɻi/ (रि) and /li/ (ल्रि).

      • The vowels e (ए) and o (ओ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthong
        Diphthong
        A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

        s /ai/ and /au/, but they became pure monophthong
        Monophthong
        A monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....

        s /eː/ and /oː/ in Classical Sanskrit.
      • The vowels ai (ऐ) and au (औ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as hiatus
        Hiatus (linguistics)
        In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....

         /aːi/ (आइ) and /aːu/ (आउ), but they became diphthong
        Diphthong
        A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

        s /ai/ (अइ) and /au/ (अउ) in Classical Sanskrit.
      • The Prātishākhyas claim that the dental consonants were articulated from the root of the teeth (dantamūlīya), but they became pure dentals later. This included the /r/, which later became retroflex.{{Citation needed|date=December 2007}}
      • Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent
        Vedic accent
        The tone accent of Vedic Sanskrit, or Vedic accent for brevity, is traditionally divided by Sanskrit grammarians into three qualities, udātta "raised" , anudātta "not raised" and svarita "sounded" .-The accents:Udātta marks the place of the inherited PIE accent...

         which could even change the meaning of the words, and was still in use in Panini's time, as we can infer by his use of devices to indicate its position. At some latter time, this was replaced by a stress accent limited to the second to fourth syllables from the end.
      • Vedic Sanskrit often allowed two like vowels to come together without merger during Sandhi
        Sandhi
        Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...

        .

      Grammar


      {{Main|Vedic Sanskrit grammar}}
      Vedic had a subjunctive absent in Panini's grammar and generally believed to have disappeared by then at least in common sentence constructions. All tenses could be conjugated in the subjunctive and optative moods, in contrast to Classical Sanskrit, with no subjunctive and only a present optative. (However, the old first-person subjunctive forms were used to complete the Classical Sanskrit imperative.) The three synthetic
      Synthetic language
      In linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...

       past tenses (imperfect, perfect and aorist
      Aorist
      Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...

      ) were still clearly distinguished semantically in (at least the earliest) Vedic, although not at all with the semantics that would be implied by their name. Rather, the imperfect was a narrative tense, similar to the Greek aorist; the perfect was often indistinguishable from the present tense, although possibly with a stative meaning; and the aorist had a meaning similar to the Greek perfect. A fifth mood, the injunctive
      Injunctive mood
      The injunctive mood was a mood in Sanskrit characterized by secondary endings but no augment, and usually looked like an augmentless aorist or imperfect. It typically stood in a main clause and had a subjunctive or imperative meaning; for example, it could indicate intention, e.g. "Indra's heroic...

      , also existed.

      Long-i stems differentiate the Devi inflection and the Vrkis inflection
      Vrkis inflection
      In Vedic Sanskrit, the and inflections are two types of inflection of feminine ī-stems.-Vrkis:The inflection exhibits an ablaut pattern different from its counterpart, the Devī inflection. The distinguishing feature of this inflection is that the ī is always accented , and that the Nominative...

      , a difference lost in Classical Sanskrit.
      • The subjunctive mood
        Subjunctive mood
        In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....

         of Vedic Sanskrit was also lost in Classical Sanskrit. Also, there was no fixed rule about the use of various tenses {{Unicode|(luṇ, laṇ and liṭ)}}.
      • There were more than twelve ways of forming infinitive
        Infinitive
        In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...

        s in Vedic Sanskrit, of which Classical Sanskrit retained only one form.
      • Nominal declinations and verbal conjugation also changed pronunciation, although the spelling was mostly retained in Classical Sanskrit. E.g., along with the Classical Sanskrit's declension of deva as {{Unicode|devaḥdevaudevāḥ}}, Vedic Sanskrit additionally allowed the forms {{Unicode|devaḥdevādevāsaḥ}}. Similarly Vedic Sanskrit has declined forms such as asme, tve, {{Unicode|yuṣme}}, tvā, etc. for the 1st and 2nd person pronouns, not found in Classical Sanskrit. The obvious reason is the attempt of Classical Sanskrit to regularize and standardize its grammar, which simultaneously led to a purge of Old Proto-Indo-European forms.
      • Proto-Indo-European and its immediate daughters
        Daughter language
        In historical linguistics, a daughter language is a language descended from another language through a process of genetic descent.-Examples:*English is a daughter language of Proto-Germanic, which is a daughter language of Proto-Indo-European....

         were essentially end-inflected languages in which what would later become bound prefixes were still independent morphemes. Such morphemes (especially for verbs) could come anywhere in the sentence, but in Classical Sanskrit, it became mandatory to attach them immediately before the verb; they, then, ceased being independent morphemes and became prefix-morphemes bound to the beginnings of verbs. There was a similar development from Homeric Greek to Classical Greek: see tmesis
        Tmesis
        Tmesis is a linguistic phenomenon in which a word or set phrase is separated into two parts, with other words occurring between them.-Verbs:...

        .

      External links



      {{Indo-Iranian languages}}
      {{Languages of South Asia}}