Sanskrit belongs to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Sanskrit was the ancient literary and classical language of India, and some of the oldest surviving Indo-European documents are written in Sanskrit. It is thought to have come into India from the northwest in the middle of the 3rd millenium B.C. Sanskrit in its classical form, a development of Vedic, was spoken in c.400 B.C. as a standard court language. It became the literary vehicle of Hindu culture and as such was used until c.A.D. 1100. Today Sanskrit still survives in liturgical usage. In the 18th c, Sanskrit was noted to have a relationship to Greek and Latin, which laid a foundation for the study of historical linguistics.
Departments & Related Programs
Sanskrit Writing System
South Asian Language Resource Center
Sanskrit at University of Pennsylvania
Sanskrit Grammar by William Dwight Whitney
Monier Williams' Sanskrit-English Dictionary 1
Monier Williams' Sanskrit-English Dictionary 2