The dominant classical language of the Indian
subcontinent, a member of the Indo-Iranian
group of the Indo-European language family,
and the sacred language of Hinduism. The
oldest form of Sanskrit is Vedic, the variety
used in the Vedas and Upanishads (about
1500-700 BC). Classical Sanskrit was
systematized by Panini and other grammarians
in the latter part of the 1st millennium BC
and became fixed as the spoken and written
language of culture, philosophy, mathematics,
law, and medicine. It is written in
Devanagari script and is the language of the
two great Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and
the Ramayana, as well as many other classical
and later works. Sanskrit vocabulary has not
only influenced the languages of India,
Thailand, and Indonesia, but has also
enriched several European languages,
including English, with borrowed words as
well as etymological bases.