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') of Pāṇini.

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.

The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda, a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from what are today Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. 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. 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. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t/ attributively संस्कृत-, saṃskṛta- nominally संस्कृतम्, saṃskṛtam, IPA: ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. List of languages by number of native speakers in India

Constitutionally recognised languages of IndiaĢ2 Official Languages of the Indian RepublicĮighth Schedule to the Constitution of India

Sanskrit alphabet with bengali