All the modern Indian languages have descended from Sanskrit which is thus rightly called the mother of modern Indian languages. There are fifteen major languages which cover the whole of India out of which eleven i.e Hindi, Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Gujurati, Rajasthani and Assamees are Indo-Aryan languages while the rest four-Telgu, Tamil, Kannad and Malayalam are Dravidian languages.  Apart from these there are certain local undeveloped languages and dialects found all over India. However, they are confined to specific areas and have limited usages and impact. They also owe their origin to Sanskrit. Besides some other languages spoken outside India like Pashto and Singhalese also descend from Sanskrit. Pashto, one of the Indo-Aryan languages is spoken in North-West Frontier provinces of Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan while Singhalese another Indo-Aryan language derived directly from Sanskrit is spoken in Sri Lanka. Even all the major European languages like German, Spanish, French, Greek, English and Slovak have many words and forms common to Sanskrit. Sanskrit is therefore recognized as an allied language to the European classical languages.

Sanskrit as a language is very rich in form and framework. Sir William Jones rightly observes “The Sanskrit language ..... is of a wonderful structure more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either... .” Famous American historian Sir William Durant has said “Sanskrit in true sense, is the mother of all European languages.”

The Sanskrit language has inspired many scholars allover the world, particularly Europeans, who studied Sanskrit and laid the foundation of a new science- comparative linguistic studies. The German scholars of 19th century are credited with doing maximum research in Sanskrit and making Sanskrit a world language. Many Indian scholars went to Europe, especially Germany to acquaint themselves with the new trend of research and analysis. Even today many German Universities have Sanskrit departments.

All our modern languages in India are children of Sanskrit and most of their vocabulary and forms of expressions are drawn and derived from Sanskrit. Many rich and remarkable words and expressions of Sanskrit still form part of all our modern languages. The present day Urdu which is more influenced by Persian comprises of eighty percent of words derived from Sanskrit. Surprisingly, the Dravidian languages although of different origin have adopted half of their words from Sanskrit.

Sanskrit is used for many ceremonial purposes in countries like Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and many other South-East Asian countries.  In India Sanskrit continued to be a majestic language for millenniums inspite of repeated social convulsions, religious reforms and foreign invasions. Centuries of Muslim rule and two and half hundred years of British rule could not diminish the vigour and vitality of Sanskrit in a slightest way. Of course Sanskrit has seen its ups and downs. For long Sanskrit has been a dead language as it is not being popularly spoken. It has always been a language of the elite and educated. The popularity of Sanskrit has been a victim of hard rules of the  difficult discipline. It is strictly within the tough framework of grammar which Panini had laid down nearly 2700 years ago. The decline of Sanskrit is attributed to its highly complex forms and delicate metaphors. The language is too poetic and lyrical in nature to be easily practised by a common man. There is too much emphasis on sound and pronunciation. Further its strict grammatical rules and emphasis on sound did not enable it to be properly translated into other classical world languages, especially English. Its popularity as a world language was therefore bottlenecked. Many rich and rhythmic words of Sanskrit poetry and philosophy are absolutely untranslatable in foreign language.

Again, Sanskrit is considered to be a heavenly language. It is believed to be the lingua-franca of gods and goddesses. All the prayers, hymns and slokas meant for reaching out the almighty are written in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the most sacred and sacrosanct language- all the pujas, ceremonies and rituals are solemninized with the recitation of Sanskrit slokas. To talk to the almighty, one has to speak the language of god. The common man therefore didn’t speak Sanskrit unless he spoke to God. This belief of the common masses that we should not speak the sacred language among ourselves as it is spoken by god also acted as a deterrence in making Sanskrit a popular language.

The popularity of Sanskrit got further eroded during the Buddhist era. The Buddha preferred to preach in the popular language-Pakrit, a derivative of Sanskrit. Buddha’s dialogues, preaching, discussions and other accounts were recorded in Pali, another popular language which squeezed the uses of Sanskrit to the minimum.

Inspite of all these difficulties, Sanskrit as a language continues to rule India and many South-East Asian countries. It has been a great unifying force which has been binding the sub-continental diversities as a concretizing fabric. Maxmullar, the greatest foreign scholar in Sanskrit has rightly said....... “Even at the present moment after centuries of English rule and English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more understood in India than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.” The vitality and persistence of Sanskrit is well evident from the above statement.