Sanskrit

The dominant classical language of the Indian subcontinent, a member of the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family, and the sacred language of Hinduism. The oldest form of Sanskrit is Vedic, the variety used in the Vedas and Upanishads (about 1500–700 BC).

Classical Sanskrit was systematized by Panini and other grammarians in the latter part of the 1st millennium BC and became fixed as the spoken and written language of culture, philosophy, mathematics, law, and medicine. It is written in Devanagari script and is the language of the two great Hindu epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana, as well as many other classical and later works. Sanskrit vocabulary has not only influenced the languages of India, Thailand, and Indonesia, but has also enriched several European languages, including English, with borrowed words as well as etymological bases.