Sanskrit

Sanskrit, classical language of the Hindu peoples of India and the oldest literary language of the Indo-European family of languages. Some early texts date from 1500 B.C., including the Vedic texts. Vedic Sanskrit was prevalent roughly 1500–150 B.C., classical Sanskrit roughly 500 B.C.–A.D. 900. Sanskrit gave rise to such modern Indian languages as Hindi and Urdu and is distantly related to the Celtic, Romance, and Slavonic languages.