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The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian Languages , which belong to the Indo-European family of languages. The term "Indic" refers to the same group without what some see as the negative connotations of " Aryan ". Note that, unlike the generic adjective " India n", "Indic" is the term used in the context of Indo-European Linguistics , and is not strictly a geographical term; non-Indo-European languages spoken in India are not included in the term, while the Indo-Aryan Superstrate In Mitanni , on the other hand, probably testifies to speakers of an Indic language that never settled on the Indian Subcontinent . SIL International in a 2005 estimate counted a total of 209 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu, about 540 million), Bengali (about 200 million), Punjabi (about 100 million), Marathi (about 70 million), Gujarati (about 45 million), Nepali (about 40 million), Oriya (about 30 million), and Sindhi (about 20 million), with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million. HISTORY The earliest evidence of the group is in Vedic Sanskrit , the language used in the ancient preserved texts of the Indian Subcontinent , the foundational canon of Hinduism known as the Veda s. The Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni is of similar age, but the only evidence is a number of loanwords. In about the 7th Century to the 5th Century BCE , the Sanskrit language was codified and standardised by the grammarian Panini ; this led (in about 200 BCE) to what is now known as "Classical" Sanskrit. However, although this preserved the integrity of the written language for a long time, the spoken language continued to evolve, and by the 6th Century , Sanskrit as a spoken language was rare, being by and large replaced by its descendants, the Prakrit s. All the Prakrits share a common ancestry, but they are not necessarily mutually intelligible. In medieval times, the Prakrits diversified into various Middle Indic dialects. " Apabhramsa " is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indic with early Modern Indic, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production; the Sravakachar of Devasena (dated to the 930s) is now considered to be the first Hindi book. The next major milestone occurred with the Muslim Invasions Of India in the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Under the flourishing Mughal Empire , Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts. However, Persian was soon displaced by Urdu . This Indo-Aryan language is a combination with Persian and Arabic elements in its vocabulary, with the grammar of the local dialects. The two largest languages that formed from Apabhransa were Bengali and Hindi; others include Gujarati, Oriya, Marathi, and Punjabi. In the Hindi-speaking areas, the main form was ''Braj-bhasha'', which is still spoken today, but was replaced in the 19th century by the ''Khari Boli'' dialect. However, a large amount of modern spoken Hindi vocabulary is derived from Perso-Arabic. This state of affairs continued until the Partition Of India in 1947. Hindustani (a mixture of Urdu and Hindi) was replaced by Hindi as the official language of India, and soon the Perso-Arabic words of Urdu began to be excised from the official Hindi corpus, in a bid to make the language more "Indian". A return to Hindi poets such as Tulsidas resulted in what is known as a Sanskritisation of the language. Arabic or Persian words in common parlance were slowly replaced by Sanskrit words, sometimes borrowed wholesale, or in new compounds. In contemporary times, there is a continuum of Hindi–Urdu, with heavily-Persianised Urdu at one end and Sanskritised Hindi at the other, although the basic grammar remains identical. Most people speak somewhere in the middle: Hindustani. SEE ALSO
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