Sanskrit

Sanskrit is an ancient Indo-European language that was spoken on the Indian subcontinent. Like Latin, Sanskrit enjoyed a long life as a literary language, and, in addition to a large body of literature, is the language in which many of the central texts of Hinduism were written.

Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages, and, in its oldest forms, preserves some of the features of Proto-Indo-European (like Proto-Indo-European's original eight grammatical cases). The oldest form of Sanskrit is Vedic sanskrit, preserved in collections of religious hymns and ritual handbooks. In its classical form, a large body of literature was written in Sanskrit, including the two widely-popular epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Though proper Classical Sanskrit was maintained for many centuries, vernacular languages related to Sanskrit (the Prakrits) developed alongside it. One of these, Pali, became historically important as one of the languages of Buddhism.