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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, 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. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, texts compiled over the period of early-to-mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE. Vedic Sanskrit has been orally preserved as a part of the Śrauta tradition of Vedic chanting, predating the advent of alphabetic writing in India 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, 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 Ancient India, Vedic Sanskrit gave way to Classical Sanskrit as defined by the grammar of . |