Beginnings of Sanskrit

     Though the Vedic Aryans entered India in several waves,
they were a poor minority in comparison with the aboriginal peoples
of North India, who were by majority, if not mostly, Dravidians. So,
naturally, they had to give up their ancestral language, which was
closely allied to the Hellenic and Iranian languages, in their daily
intercourse with the aboriginal public, and gradually adopt their
language for practical purposes, but ancestral vocabulary, as far as
possibles.

     Even the Vedic language exhibits clear traces of Dravidian
admixture, as the cerebral sounds and the loan-words do testify.

     The aboriginal languages of India current during the Vedic
period were classified into four or five categories called Prƒkrits,
lit. “the early made”, out of which and their dead ancestral
language, the Vedic Aryans and their descendants gradually
evolved the literary, dialect called Sanskrit, lit ‘the perfectly done.’