Sanskrit

Sanskrit
saṃskṛtam
The word saṃskṛtam written in Devanagari.
Pronunciation	[sə̃skr̩t̪əm]  pronunciation
Region	Greater India
Era	ca. 2nd millennium BCE – 600 BCE (Vedic Sanskrit), after which it gave rise to the Middle Indo-Aryan languages. Continues as a liturgical language (Classical Sanskrit).
Revival	Attempts at revitalization. Total: 5 million speakers (2001) L1: 14,315 L2: 1,234,931 L3: 3,742,223
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Sanskrit
Early forms	Vedic Sanskrit Sanskrit
Writing system	No native script. Written in various Brahmic scripts.
Official status
Official language in	India
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sa
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	sans1269

Sanskrit (English pronunciation:/ˈsænskrɪt/; Sanskrit: संस्कृतम् written in Devanagari script; IAST: Saṃskṛtam;  pronunciation ; IPA: [sə̃skr̩t̪əm] or saṃskṛta, originally saṃskṛtā vāk, "refined speech") is the primary sacred language of Hinduism and Mahāyāna Buddhism, a philosophical language in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. It was also a literary language that was in use as a lingua franca in ancient and medieval South Asia. It is a standardised dialect of Old Indo-Aryan, originating as Vedic Sanskrit and tracing its linguistic ancestry back to Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European. Today it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand. As one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies.