Sanskrit

Sanskrit
Template:IAST or Template:IAST
Spoken in	Indian Sub-continent
Total speakers	about 15000 [1]
Language family	Indo-European  Indo-Iranian   Indo-Aryan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sa
ISO 639-2	san
ISO 639-3	san
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Sanskrit (Template:IAST, short for Template:IAST, literally "unimpaired/full-formed speech", diglossically contrasted with [[Prakrit|Template:IAST]], "derived/evolved/artless speech") is an ancient Indo-Aryan language that was spoken on the Indian Subcontinent. Besides India, it was used as a liturgical language for Hinduism and Buddhism in Tibet and South-East Asia. The term Sanskrit is popularly applied for Classical Sanskrit (unless expressly specified as Vedic or Epic). As the diglossic high-register of Indo-Aryan, classical Sanskrit was a prestige dialect that was used as a marker of social class and literacy in post-Vedic India.

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 its original eight grammatical cases). The oldest sanskrit dialect is Vedic sanskrit, preserved in the Vedas, dating from about 1500 BCE. Old-Indic loanwords and Indo-Aryan names are also found in Hurrian (Mittani), Hittite and Nuzi records dated to around 1400 BCE.

The grammar of classical sanskrit was codified by Panini by the 5th century BCE in his work, the Ashtadhyayi (literally, the "eight chapters"), which contains 3,959 sutras (aphorisms or rules) divided thematically into eight chapters. Although Panini mentions eleven other grammarians that preceeded him, the Ashtadhyayi is today the earliest extant Sanskrit grammar that acquired prescriptive value in later times and has continued to be considered the most authoritative till date. Katyayana's varttikas ("elaborations", circa 4th century BCE) and Patanjali's Mahabhasya ("great commentary", circa 2nd century BCE) on Panini's sutras are considered as the most important works on grammar next only in importance to Panini.

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. Like Latin and Greek, Sanskrit enjoyed a long life as a literary language, and, in addition to a large body of secular literature, is the language in which many of the central texts of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism were written. All the modern Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages are greatly influenced by Sanskrit. Spoken sanskrit had a steady decline from 1000 BCE till present times, there being only about 14135 fluent speakers in India according to its 2001 census . Modern Sanskrit Revival attempts are in place among educated Indians in India and the West, chiefly spearheaded by Samskrita Bharati.