Editing Indo-Aryan languages (section)

==== {{Anchor|Old Indo-Aryan}}Old Indo-Aryan ====
The earliest evidence of the group is from [[Vedic Sanskrit]], that is used in the ancient preserved texts of the [[Indian subcontinent]], the foundational canon of the [[Hindu synthesis]] known as the [[Veda]]s. The [[Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni]] is of similar age to the language of the [[Rigveda]], but the only evidence of it is a few proper names and specialised loanwords.<ref name=":0">{{cite book|title=The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and The Indus Civilization |last=Parpola |first=Asko |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2015}}</ref>

While Old Indo-Aryan is the earliest stage of the Indo-Aryan branch, from which all known languages of the later stages Middle and New Indo-Aryan are derived, some documented Middle Indo-Aryan variants cannot fully be derived from the documented form of Old Indo-Aryan (on which Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are based), but betray features that must go back to other undocumented dialects of Old Indo-Aryan.<ref>{{cite book|last=Oberlies |first=Thomas |year=2007 |chapter=Chapter Five: Aśokan Prakrit and Pāli |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OtCPAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA161 |editor1-last=Cardona |editor1-first=George |editor2-last=Jain |editor2-first=Danesh |title=The Indo-Aryan Languages |publisher=Routledge |page=179 |isbn=9781135797119}}</ref>

From Vedic Sanskrit, "[[Sanskrit]]" (literally 'put together, perfected, elaborated') developed as the prestige language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre, etc. Sanskrit of the later Vedic texts is comparable to [[Classical Sanskrit]], but is largely [[mutually unintelligible]] with Vedic Sanskrit.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gombrich |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jZyJAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24 |title=Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo |date=14 April 2006 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-134-90352-8 |page=24 |language=en}}</ref>