Indian subcontinent Dates indicate only a rough time frame. •
Proto-Indo-Aryan (before 1500 BCE, reconstructed) •
Old Indo-Aryan (–500 BCE) • early Old Indo-Aryan: includes
Vedic Sanskrit ( to 500 BCE) • late Old Indo-Aryan:
Epic Sanskrit,
Classical Sanskrit ( to 1300 CE) •
Mitanni Indo-Aryan () •
Middle Indo-Aryan or
Prakrits ( to 1400 CE) • early Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g. early Jain and Buddhist texts ( or 5th century BCE), Ashokan Prakrits,
Pali,
Gandhari, ( to 200 BCE) • middle Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g.
Dramatic Prakrits,
Elu ( to 700 CE) • late Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g.
Abahattha ( to 1400 CE) •
Early Modern Indo-Aryan (Late Medieval India): e.g. early
Dakhini and emergence of the
Dehlavi dialect from the
Pontic–Caspian steppe Proto-Indo-Aryan Proto-Indo-Aryan (or sometimes Proto-Indic) is the
reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. It is intended to reconstruct the language of the
pre-Vedic Indo-Aryans. Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of
Old Indo-Aryan (1500–300 BCE), which is directly attested as
Vedic and
Mitanni-Aryan. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a small number of
conservative features lost in Vedic.
Mitanni-Aryan hypothesis Some theonyms, proper names, and other terminology of the Late
Bronze Age Mitanni civilisation of
Upper Mesopotamia exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate. While what few written records left by the Mittani are either in
Hurrian (which appears to have been the predominant language of their kingdom) or
Akkadian (the main
diplomatic language of the Late Bronze Age Near East), these apparently Indo-Aryan names suggest that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the
Hurrians in the course of the
Indo-Aryan expansion. If these traces are Indo-Aryan, they would be the earliest known direct evidence of Indo-Aryan, and would increase the precision in dating the split between the Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages (as the texts in which the apparent Indicisms occur can be dated with some accuracy). In a treaty between the
Hittites and the Mitanni, the deities
Mitra,
Varuna,
Indra, and the
Ashvins (
Nasatya) are invoked.
Kikkuli's horse training text includes technical terms such as
aika (cf. Sanskrit
eka, "one"),
tera (
tri, "three"),
panza (
panca, "five"),
satta (
sapta, seven),
na (
nava, "nine"),
vartana (
vartana, "turn", round in the horse race). The numeral
aika "one" is of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian in general or early Iranian (which has
aiva). Another text has
babru (
babhru, "brown"),
parita (
palita, "grey"), and (
pingala, "red"). Their chief festival was the celebration of the
solstice (
vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called
marya, the term for "warrior" in
Sanskrit as well; note
mišta-nnu (=
miẓḍha, ≈ Sanskrit
mīḍha) "payment (for catching a fugitive)" (M. Mayrhofer,
Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, Heidelberg, 1986–2000; Vol. II:358). Sanskritic interpretations of Mitanni royal names render
Artashumara (
artaššumara) as
Ṛtasmara "who thinks of
Ṛta" (Mayrhofer II 780), Biridashva (
biridašṷa, biriiašṷa) as
Prītāśva "whose horse is dear" (Mayrhofer II 182), Priyamazda (
priiamazda) as
Priyamedha "whose wisdom is dear" (Mayrhofer II 189, II378), Citrarata as
Citraratha "whose chariot is shining" (Mayrhofer I 553), Indaruda/Endaruta as
Indrota "helped by
Indra" (Mayrhofer I 134), Shativaza (
šattiṷaza) as
Sātivāja "winning the race price" (Mayrhofer II 540, 696), Šubandhu as
Subandhu "having good relatives" (a name in
Palestine, Mayrhofer II 209, 735), Tushratta (
tṷišeratta, tušratta, etc.) as *tṷaiašaratha, Vedic
Tvastar "whose chariot is vehement" (Mayrhofer, Etym. Wb., I 686, I 736).
Old Indo-Aryan The earliest evidence of the group is from
Vedic Sanskrit, which 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. 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. 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.
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.
New Indo-Aryan Medieval Hindustani In the
Central Zone Hindi-speaking areas, for a long time the
prestige dialect was
Braj Bhasha, but this was replaced in the 13th century by
Dehlavi-based
Hindustani. Hindustani was strongly influenced by
Persian, with these and later Sanskrit influence leading to the emergence of Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard
Urdu as
registers of the Hindustani language. This state of affairs continued until the division of the British Indian Empire in 1947, when Modern Standard Hindi became the official language in India and Modern Standard Urdu became official in Pakistan. Despite the different script the fundamental grammar remains identical, the difference is more
sociolinguistic than purely linguistic. Today it is widely understood/spoken as a second or third language throughout South Asia and one of the most widely known languages in the world in terms of number of speakers.
Outside the Indian subcontinent Domari Domari is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by older
Dom people scattered across the Middle East. The language is reported to be spoken as far north as
Azerbaijan and as far south as central Sudan. Based on the systematicity of sound changes, linguists have concluded that the ethnonyms
Domari and
Romani derive from the Indo-Aryan word
ḍom.
Lomavren Lomavren is a nearly extinct
mixed language, spoken by the
Lom people, that arose from
language contact between a language related to
Romani and
Domari and the
Armenian language.
Parya Parya is spoken in
Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan by the descendants of migrants from the Indian subcontinent. The language retains many features similar to Punjabi and the Western Hindi dialects, while also bearing some influence from Tajik Persian.
Romani The Romani language is usually included in the Western Indo-Aryan languages. Romani varieties, which are mainly spoken throughout Europe, are noted for their relatively conservative nature; maintaining the Middle Indo-Aryan present-tense person concord markers, alongside consonantal endings for nominal case. Indeed, these features are no longer evident in most other modern Central Indo-Aryan languages. Moreover, Romani shares an innovative pattern of past-tense person, which corresponds to Dardic languages, such as Kashmiri and Shina. This is believed to be further indication that proto-Romani speakers were originally situated in central regions of the subcontinent, before migrating to northwestern regions. However, there are no known historical sources regarding the development of the Romani language specifically within India. Research conducted by nineteenth-century scholars Pott (1845) and Miklosich (1882–1888) demonstrated that the Romani language is most aptly designated as a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA), as opposed to Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA); establishing that proto-Romani speakers could not have left India significantly earlier than AD 1000. The principal argument favouring a migration during or after the transition period to NIA is the loss of the old system of nominal case, coupled with its reduction to a two-way nominative-oblique case system. A secondary argument concerns the system of gender differentiation, due to the fact that Romani has only two genders (masculine and feminine). Middle Indo-Aryan languages (named MIA) generally employed three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and some modern Indo-Aryan languages retain this aspect today. It is suggested that loss of the neuter gender did not occur until the transition to NIA. During this process, most of the neuter nouns became masculine, while several became feminine. For example, the neuter
aggi "fire" in Prakrit morphed into the feminine
āg in Hindustani, and
jag in Romani. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romani and other NIA languages have additionally been cited as indications that the forerunner of Romani remained on the Indian subcontinent until a later period, possibly as late as the tenth century.
Sindhic migrations Kholosi,
Jadgali,
Luwati, Maimani and Al Sayigh represent offshoots of the
Sindhic subfamily of Indo-Aryan that have established themselves in the
Persian Gulf region, perhaps through sea-based migrations. These are of a later origin than the Rom and Dom migrations which represent a different part of Indo-Aryan as well.
Indentured labourer migrations The use by the
British East India Company of indentured labourers led to the transplanting of Indo-Aryan languages around the world, leading to locally influenced lects that diverged from the source language, such as
Fiji Hindi and
Caribbean Hindustani. == Phonology ==