How has the Sanskrit language spread?

Sanskrit or संस्कृतम्, saṃskṛtam, a classical language of South Asia, that connotes several Old Indo-Aryan varieties, is a sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and language of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. 

“Sanskrit” can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit, a refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī (“Eight Chapters”) written and composed by Pāṇini ( पाणिनि, a Sanskrit philologist, grammarian, and revered scholar in ancient who finds a mention between the 6th and 4th century BCE, also considered the “first descriptive linguist”, and even labelled as “the father of linguistics since the discovery and publication of his work by European scholars in the nineteenth century).

The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit Kālidāsa wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit.

In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language.

The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to the most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and the Iliad of Homer. As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European. Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around the turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts, and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari.

A classical language of South Asia belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages, Sanskrit arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest of the Indus region, during the early 2nd millennium BCE, the late Bronze Age. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. 

The nomadic tribes who spoke the language are thought to have spread across much of the known world around 6,000 years ago. People who spoke Proto-Indo-European lived in a strategic location at a critical juncture in history. They were positioned to benefit from transportation innovations, the most significant of which were the introduction of horseback riding and the invention of wheeled vehicles.

Horses, wagons, and chariots provided these Indo-Europeans with military advantages over the existing settled societies of Europe and Asia. Another biological benefit the nomads possessed was the development of a gene mutation that allowed Indo-Europeans to digest milk even after they had been weaned, providing these nomads with a continuous and mobile source of nutrition. These historical facts can be found in the culture of the early Vedic people, who revered horses and frowned upon the slaughter of milch cattle.

While experts agree on this, there are two competing hypotheses for the origin of these Indo-Europeans (or, as they were earlier known, the Aryans). According to popular belief, their homeland was in the Pontic steppe, which corresponds to modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Another theory holds that the Proto-Indo-Europeans migrated from Anatolia to modern-day Turkey. The latter hypothesis was recently backed up by a seminal study led by evolutionary biologist Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, which was published in the journal Science.

The most archaic of the Indo-Aryan varieties is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rig Veda, a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from what today is Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit’s phonology and syntax. 

People speak languages that belong to the same linguistic family—the Indo-European family—across a large swath of the Eurasian continent, from Britain in the west to Bengal in the east. An Indo-European language is spoken by roughly half of the world’s population today. This means that approximately three billion people speak tongues descended from what was once a single language spoken by a group of nomads whose numbers would have been no larger than a tribal confederation.

Sanskrit’s status, function, and place in India’s cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India’s Eighth Schedule languages. However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India’s recent decadal censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but the numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukuls since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule. Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants. 

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