More than 1,600 languages or dialects, comprising 16 major language groups, are spoken in India. The constitution provides that the official language of the country is Hindi. However, it also accepts English as an associate language and approves its use for official purposes. Despite their separate names, Hindi and Urdu are actually slightly different dialects of the same language. The main differences lie in their vocabulary sources, scripts, and religious traditions. Hindi vocabulary derives mainly from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains many words of Persian and Arabic origin; Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, and Urdu in a Persian Arabic script. Hindi is spoken mainly by Hindus; Urdu is used predominantly by Muslims-in India as well as throughout Pakistan. Most of the peoples in northern and eastern India, except the tribal groups, speak Indo-Aryan languages such as Assamese, Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali. Although a vast majority of the population is of the Hindu faith, the Muslim influence in architectural style and in some outward forms of living is strong in Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Jammu and Kashmėr.
Two major varieties of Hindi are spoken; together they have more than 400 million speakers in India alone. Western Hindi, which originated in the area around Delhi, includes literary Hindi and Urdu. Eastern Hindi is spoken mainly in central Uttar Pradesh and eastern Madhya Pradesh; its most important literary works are in the Awadhi dialect.
Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu scriptures, was also the medium for a vast body of religious and secular writing that constitutes the core of classical Indian literatureVedic Sanskrit, the language used in the Vedas, the sacred Hindu scriptures, is the earliest form of Sanskrit, dating from about 1500 BC to about 200 BC. A later variety of the language, classical Sanskrit (from about 500 BC), was a language of literary and technical works. Even today, it is still widely studied in India and functions as a sacred and learned language.
