Proto-Indo-Aryan language


Proto-Indic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indic languages. It is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. It is descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian and thus from Proto-Indo-European. It is a Satem language.

History

Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indic which is directly attested as Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Indeed, Vedic Sanskrit is very close to Proto-Indic.
Some of the Prakrits display a few minor features derived from Proto-Indic that had already disappeared in Vedic Sanskrit.
Today, several Modern Indic languages are extant.

Differences from Vedic

Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, the other Indic languages preserve a small number of archaic features lost in Vedic.
One of these is the representation of Proto-Indo-European *l and *r. Vedic merge both as. Later, however, some instances of Indo-European again surface in Classical Sanskrit, indicating that the contrast survived in an early Indic dialect parallel to Vedic..
The common consonant cluster kṣ of Vedic and later Sanskrit has a particularly wide range of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Indo-Iranian sources, which partly remain distinct in later Indic languages: