Prakrit

Prakrits are various Indic languages and dialects that are the forebears of Sanskrit. The most popular of the Prakrits was Pali, which had the largest bearing on Sanskrit. Typically the Prakrits were vernacular languages, often used for ordinary speech while Sanskrit continued to be used as the literary language; some of the Prakrits, however, developed literary languages of their own. We might say that the Prakrits are to Sanskrit as Vulgar Latin and the Romance languages are to Classical Latin.

Some scholars include all modern Indic languages ultimately derived from Sanskrit under the rubric of "Prakrits"; others prefer to designate as Prakrits only dialects and languages that were used in antiquity. Some definitions cite the Prakrit period around 1,000 - 1,200 CE, whilst others place the period between the third century BC and the fourth century CE.