Sango Adamawa-Ubangi Sanskrit [Skt ‘put together; wellformed, refined, correct’]

Term for various forms of Old Indo-Aryan. The oldest form is the language of the Vedas (ritual texts originating before 1000 BC but written down much later), followed by the language of speculative writings such as Brāhmanas and theoretical works like the grammar of Pānini. The language of the two great epics, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana, dates to the second and first centuries BC. The term Classical Sanskrit is used to denote the language still used today for the language of priests and scholars in India; especially important is the Devanāgarī script developed from the Brāhmi script. In some usage, only the classical language is called Sanskrit, the term Vedic being used for the older form, as this differs in many aspects (e.g. more complex morphology) from the classical language.