A group of
languages making up the Indic
branch,
Indo-Iranian subfamily, of the
Indo-European language family, including
Assamese,
Bengali,
Oriya,
Punjabi,
Lahnda,
Sindhi,
Romani, the
Pahari group of languages,
Gujarati,
Marathi,
Sinhalese,
Divehi,
Hindi,
Urdu, the
Bihari group of languages, and the
Rajasthani group of langauges.
The Indo-Aryan languages are generally assigned into three major linguistic periods: Old, Middle, and New Indo-Aryan. Old Indo-Aryan includes different dialects and linguistic states referred to in common as Sanskrit. Middle Indo-Aryan includes both the dialects of the inscriptions from the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD and literary languages and are referred to in common as Prakrits. However, the later stage of Middle Indo-Aryan is customarily referred to as Apabhramsa. New Indo-Aryan is represented by such modern vernaculars as Hindi and Bengali, which began to emerge from about the 10th century AD.
The languages of the Indo-Aryan branch are spoken in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The total number of Indo-Aryan speakers is well over 650 million. There are 547 mother tongues of the Indo-Aryan group in use within the country of India.