The banyan tree
No country comes close to match linguistic diversity of India. Just to talk about statistics, number of mother tongue listed as per 1961 census are 1652! As everyone says, language changes with every kilometer in our country. This linguistic legacy is outcome of interaction between diverse cultures that India has.
According to number of speakers, Indian languages are broadly categorised into 4 major groups.
- Indo-Aryan Family
- Dravidian Family
- Austric Family
- Sino-Tibetan Family
The two dominant language groups are Indo-Aryan language family and Dravidian language family.
Indo-Aryan Language Family
Indo-Aryan languages entered in India from Central Asia. These were used by Aaryn people who were believed to be settled in Iran and northern India. Linguists generally recognize three major divisions of Indo-Aryan languages: Old, Middle, and New (or Modern). These divisions are primarily linguistic and are named in the order in which they initially appeared, with later divisions coexisting with rather than completely replacing earlier ones.
Old Indo-Aryan includes different dialects and Sanskrit language. The most ancient language is found in Hindu sacred texts called the Vedas. There is a clear-cut difference between Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit.
Middle Indo-Aryan includes the dialects and languages catved from the 3rd century BCE to the 4th century BCE as well as various literary languages. Apabhramsa dialects represent the latest stage of Middle Indo-Aryan development.
Sanskrit gave birth many of the languages we speak today. Hindi, most widely used in India dominates all the languages of this group. Others being Marathi, Gujrathi, Panjabi, Bengali, Sindhi and many more that fall under the same language group.
Dravidian Language Family
Dravidian language family was first recognized as an independent family in 1816. The term Dravidian was introduced by Robert A. Caldwell in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages (1856). The Dravidian language family, consisting of about 80 language varieties (both languages and dialects) is today spoken by about 220 million people, mostly in southern and central India and surrounding countries.
Dravidian, people belonging to southern part of India are believed to be native to the continent. The most ancient forms of the Dravidian languages are found in southern India, which were not exposed to Sanskrit until the 5th century BCE. This suggests that the south was populated by the speakers of the Dravidian languages even before the entry of Aryans into India. Yet, neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language nor its exact dispersal through time is known with certainty.
These are further divided into 4 categories.
Austric Language Family
The Austric languages of India belong to the Austro-Asiatic sub-family, which are represented by languages of the Munda or Kol Group, spoken in the central, eastern and north-eastern India and languages of the Mon-Khmer group. These are very ancient languages which have been in existence much before the advent of Aryans and were referred in ancient Sanskrit literature as Nisadas. Munda languages are the largest of the Austric group of languages. They consist of fourteen tribal languages.
Sino-Tibetan Language Family
The Sino-Tibetan or Mongoloid family stretches all over the sub-Himalayan tracts, covering North Bihar, North Bengal, Assam up to the north-eastern frontiers of the country.
The languages today have evolved and branched in various directions. The structure looks like a full grown, mature Banyan tree talking the tale of it’s time. It is certainly an asset to preserve for long.
