Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit, also called the Vedic language, is the earliest attested form of the Sanskrit and Prakrit languages, of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled from the mid-2nd to the mid-1st millennium BCE, and was preserved orally, predating the local advent of writing by several centuries. The oldest hymns of the Rigveda are generally estimated to roughly 1500 BCE. The late form of the language was formalized as Classical Sanskrit in Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, and its literature has been a major source for reconstructing Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Indo-Iranian history.