Losing our tongue: The rise & fall of languages

The decline of some languages was probably expected by India's policymakers because the facilities provided for language education are mainly for those included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution

- GN Devy

There was human habitation in India for thousands of years prior to the emergence of Sanskrit, and it is known that various languages existed, but we have no record of the languages that can help reconstruct the entire linguistic past. The earliest records of oral texts date to about 35 centuries before the present (BP), and the earliest records of writing date to 24 centuries BP.

While scripts had been in use in other parts of Asia, west of India for 50 centuries BP, why the Indian subcontinent took so long to get into lexical modes of expression has not yet been fully investigated. Undeciphered so far, the sign system of the Indus Valley civilisation makes any historical narrative of Indian languages incomplete and tentative. Writing originated in India some 24 centuries BP in the form of inscriptions and hand-written manuscripts. The writing culture was completely transformed when the paper came into use about 10 centuries BP, and it experienced another profound shift two centuries BP with the advent of printing of the first few Indian languages.

We still do not have conclusive knowledge of the remote ancient past of Tamil and several other indigenous languages in existence during the second millennium BC in the eastern parts of India. We know that at a somewhat uncertain point in time, during the phase of India's transformation from hunter-gatherer society to pastoral society, a branch of the remote-ancient Tamil spread to the north and another to the Northwest. Nevertheless, the precise timing remains unknown.