A Handbook of Buddhist Languages

The original Buddhist teaching have been compiled in a language called Pali, a kind of “Prakrti” or the people’s language, which in turn was the lingua franca of a large part of the Indian sub-continent and thrived in juxtaposition with the Sacred Vedic Languages or perhaps, even prior to the composition of the Vedic texts. Needles to state that the people’s languages, Collectively called “Prakrti”, eventually evolved into most of the modern-day vernacular languages of our nation. Further, it would be preposterous to think that there existed no language across the subcontinent when the Vedic language was in use…

Sanskrit (literally the purified language) … culminated in the work of Panini about the year 300 B.C. … represents a polished from of an archaic tongue, which by Panini’s time was no longer a vernacular. … we may take the language of … the archaic dialect of the Upper Doab of which the Sanskrit became the polished language… It is thus a mistake to say that any modern Indian language is derived from Sanskrit.