Indian language families, classical languages, and the major literary traditions from Vedic to modern times
Classification of Indian Languages
The Basics
India has never spoken with one tongue. Long before any kingdom or empire, different groups of people arrived in or already lived on the subcontinent, each carrying its own speech. Over thousands of years these speeches branched, mixed and settled into regions, leaving India with four major language families that linguists use to classify almost every Indian language spoken today: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan.
By the early 2000s, India had many languages with long, rich literary histories. There was no formal government category for their antiquity. Tamil scholars and others argued that languages with ancient, original literatures deserved separate recognition and support.
Sanskrit's story begins with the Rig Veda, composed from around 1500 BCE. It is the earliest text of the Indo-Aryan languages. It is a collection of hymns to gods such as Agni, Indra, and Varuna. This early form is called Vedic Sanskrit. From it grew the Upanishads, Puranas, and Dharmasutras.
The story returns to the very start of Indian literature: the Vedas. These were composed in an archaic form of Sanskrit, long before the courtly Sanskrit of the Gupta age. The word Veda comes from the root 'vid', meaning knowledge. There are four Vedas: Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva. Each one grew through four successive layers: the Samhita (a collection of hymns), the Brahmana (prose explanation of ritual), the Aranyaka (forest texts) and the Upanishad (philosophical discourse).
After the ritual hymns of the Vedas, Indian literature produced two long narrative poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, known together as the itihasa or 'that which happened'. Both grew out of bardic traditions, stories told and sung by wandering poets called sutas and magadhas, long before they were fixed into the texts we know today.
After the epics had given India its stories of heroic ages, a new genre arose to organise myth, genealogy and ritual into one body of literature: the Puranas. The word means 'old' or 'that which renews the old'. Tradition attributes their compilation to the sage Vyasa, also credited with the Mahabharata. There are eighteen major Puranas, called Mahapuranas, a number treated as conventional rather than strictly literal. About nineteen minor Upa-Puranas grew up alongside them. They became popular with ordinary people who found the Vedas too difficult.
By the time of the Buddha and Mahavira, Sanskrit was the language of Brahmin scholars and the court. It followed strict grammatical rules. Ordinary people spoke simpler regional forms called Prakrit. Pali was one such Prakrit, spoken in Magadha, in south Bihar. The Buddha is believed to have preached in Ardha-Magadhi, not classical Pali. This let his teaching reach common people directly.
Jain teachings were first passed down only orally, because monks treated even scriptures as a form of possession, against their vow of non-attachment. Over centuries, much of this knowledge was lost or corrupted, so Jain teachers decided to write it down.
By the early centuries of the common era, the far south of India, called Tamilakam, was held by three ruling lines, the Chera in the west, the Chola in the north-east, and the Pandya in the south, with the Pandya capital at Madurai. Historians debate whether these were full states or looser chiefly powers resting on tribute and plunder, though they issued coins, built ports, and patronised poets. Into this world came Tamil poetry, the earliest surviving literature in a Dravidian language.
After the Sangam age, Tamil poetry did not stop growing. New courtly and devotional genres appeared: the Kalampakam, where the last line or syllable of one verse began the next; the Kovai, verses arranged in a thematic sequence, seen in the Pantikkovai (6th or 7th century, honouring the Pandya king Netumaran), Manikkavachakar's Tirukkovaiyar (9th century, in praise of Shiva), and Poyyamolip Pulavar's Tanchaivanan Kovai (13th century); the Ula, songs sung when a deity's image was taken out in procession; and Tutu poetry, built around a message carried to a god or lover. The moral sayings of Avvaiyar (9th or 10th century) remained popular long after. Tamil also produced two epics of this transitional period, works that historians use as sources on religion and society.
Between the 6th and 9th centuries, Tamil country produced two streams of intense devotional poetry: the Vaishnava Alvars, beginning with Peyalvar, Puttalvar and Poikaialvar, and the Shaiva Nayanars, beginning with Tirumular and Karaikal Ammaiyar. Their hymns praised a personal god directly, in Tamil, not in Sanskrit, and grew out of older Sangam traditions of praise poetry. In the 10th century, Nathamuni collected the Alvar hymns into the Nalayira Divya Prabandham. Nambi Andar Nambi compiled the Nayanar hymns into the Tirumurai, later treated as a Fifth Veda. The 12th-century Periyapuranam recorded the lives of the Shaiva saints. This southern Bhakti, including the woman poet Andal among the Alvars, became the model for devotional movements elsewhere in India.
From the late 12th century, Muslim mystics called Sufis began settling across north India. This followed the Turkish conquest of Delhi. They organised themselves into silsilahs, or spiritual orders. Each silsilah traced a chain of teachers back to the Prophet. The two major orders in medieval India were the Chishti order and the Suhrawardi order.
Persian entered India with the Turkish conquest from the 12th century, replacing earlier Arabic dominance which stayed confined to religious scholars. Lahore became the first centre of Persian writing, with early poets like Masud Sad Salman expressing attachment to the city, before Delhi grew into the greater literary capital under the Sultanate.
By the early 19th century, regional languages in Bengal had centuries of devotional poetry behind them, such as the medieval Mangal Kavyas, but they had barely been printed or developed into modern prose.
When the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950, India needed an official language policy. The Union government had to decide which language to use for official work. It also had to recognise the country's many mother tongues.