ABSTRACT
The Aryan tribes entered India via its western borders, coming from regions of Central and Hither Asia. Their migration to the East can be dated to the first half of the second millennium BC. It is generally assumed that the Aryan invasion was a continuous process rather than one isolated wave, and that it lasted for hundreds of years. The most ancient type of Middle Indo-Aryan language is Pali, the language in which the canonical works of Buddhism were written. In later Prakrits, two branches are distinguished, the western and the eastern, both of which are already attested in the inscriptions of Asoka. The literary New Indo-Aryan languages are markedly subject to the influence of the classical literary medium, i.e. Sanskrit, and this influence has gone on increasing over the last hundred and fifty years. The generally accepted classification of the New Indo-Aryan languages is basically a genealogical one.
