Sanskrit (language)

Indian Languages
South India
History of India
Specific Languages
India
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3 ANSWERS ASK TO ANSWER
What is the aboriginal language of Indians before
Sanskrit speakers migrated from Iran?
Origin and development
Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-Iranian sub-family of the Indo-European
family of languages. Its closest ancient relatives are the Iranian languages
Avestan (with which it is nearly identical) and Old Persian .
In order to explain the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-
European languages, many scholars have proposed migration hypotheses
asserting that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in what
is now India and Pakistan from the north-west some time during the early
second millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes the close
relationship of the Indo-Iranian tongues with the Baltic and Slavic languages,
vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and
the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna.
The earliest attested Sanskrit texts are Brahmanical texts of the Rigveda ,
which date to the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. No written records from
such an early period survive, if ever existed. However, scholars are confident
that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they were ceremonial
literature whose correct pronunciation was considered crucial to its religious
efficacy.
From the Rigveda until the time of Pini (fl. 4th century BCE) the
development of the early Vedic language may be observed in other Vedic
texts: the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , Brahmanas , and
Upanishads . During this time, the prestige of the language, its use for sacred
purposes, and the importance attached to its correct enunciation all served
as powerful conservative forces resisting the normal processes of linguistic
change. However, there is a clear, five-level linguistic development of Vedic
from the Rigveda to the language of the Upanishads and the earliest Sutras
(such as Baudhayana )
Sanskrit
Related Questions
What was the language that was probably spoken in India before the arrival of
Sanskrit?
Which current Indian languages, most closely resembles Sanskrit in the way it
sounds?
Has every Indian language, either fully or partly, derived from Sanskrit?
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33 Follow Question
Downvote Comments 1+
Written 8 Sep. Asked to answer by Anonymous.
Indo-European languages arrived from Central Asia. Dravidian languages may
have arrived from Iran earlier if the Elamo-Dravidian connection is real;
otherwise, likely also from Central Asia where the similar Altaic languages are
found. Munda arrived from Southeast Asia. Almost certainly Indians 10000
years ago were speaking languages that later became entirely extinct.


Joseph Boyle
12 upvotes by Anonymous, Anonymous, Meenakshi Nandhini, (more)
12 Upvote
Sanskrit did not originate in Iran.
The ancestral South Indian population's home corresponds roughly to the
areas of South India where Dravidian languages are spoken. This population is
Sue Sullivan, Writer, researcher
5 upvotes by Anonymous, Anonymous, Abhijit Zimare, (more)
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languages to learn if your main goal is to
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Related Questions
Why do Tamilians not accept Sanskrit as the language from which most of the
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Downvote Comments 1+
Updated 27d ago.
around 60,000 years old. The ancestral North Indian population diverged
from the South Indian group around 40,000 years ago. (See 'Archeogenetics of
South Asia' on Wikipedia).
So, the very oldest languages spoken in India may have been some type of
paleo-Tamil in the south, and, in north India, some type of paleo-Prakrit, after
40,000 BC. It's entirely possible that these paleo languages of ancient India
were so different from any modern language that they would not be
recognizable as related to anything modern. On the other hand, they may have
had strong similarities to the theoretical language known as Nostratic, the
proposed ancestral macro-language group which includes Indo-European,
Finno-Ugrian, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian and various other language groups of
Europe and Asia.


5 Upvote
Downvote Comments 2+
Written 8 Sep.
Sanskrit speakers most likely never came from outside. Along with the Indo-
Aryan migration theory, there's other theory called Out of India theory . This
may not be quite sensible but something people propose is that both Sanskrit
speakers and "Dravidian/native" language speakers originated from Indus
valley civilization and spread into different regions. This could be possible.
Even the Indo-Aryan migration theory is being challenged and most likely not
so relevant as experiments on genetics by Harvard and Center for Cellular and
Molecular Biology, Hyderabad say that the R1A1 gene(Aryan gene) was found
way earlier than what the theory says(some 4-6k years ago). Except for
Tamilnadu where the Dravidian parties have run their propaganda against
Hindi(could be out of power thirst and a sense of excessive
nationalism/xenophobia), everywhere in the country, the Aryan Migration
theory isn't accepted well.


Anonymous
3 upvotes by Sindhu Bs, Devender Mishra, and Soumendu Majee.
3 Upvote
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