🔤 Languages and scripts
Languages and scripts of India
The 22 languages of the Constitution’s Eighth Schedule, the 11 Classical Languages, and how India’s scripts grew from Brahmi — from official records and NCERT textbooks.
A language is what we speak; a script is what we write a language in. Most of Ashoka’s edicts, for example, were in the Prakrit language, written in the Brahmi script.
The 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule
Fourteen were in the Constitution from the start; the rest were added in 1967, 1992 and 2004. A 🏛 marks a Classical Language.
In the Constitution from the start (14)
- Assamese असमिया 🏛 3 October 2024
- Bengali बांग्ला 🏛 3 October 2024
- Gujarati गुजराती
- Hindi हिन्दी
- Kannada कन्नड़ 🏛 31 October 2008
- Kashmiri कश्मीरी
- Malayalam मलयालम 🏛 8 August 2013
- Marathi मराठी 🏛 3 October 2024
- Odia ओड़िया 🏛 1 March 2014
- Punjabi पंजाबी
- Sanskrit संस्कृत 🏛 25 November 2005
- Tamil तमिल 🏛 12 October 2004
- Telugu तेलुगु 🏛 31 October 2008
- Urdu उर्दू
Added in 1967 (1)
- Sindhi सिंधी
Added in 1992 (3)
- Konkani कोंकणी
- Manipuri मणिपुरी
- Nepali नेपाली
Added in 2004 (4)
- Bodo बोडो
- Dogri डोगरी
- Maithili मैथिली
- Santhali संथाली
The Ministry of Home Affairs lists Odia under its older spelling, ‘Oriya’. Article 351 makes it the Union’s duty to promote the spread of Hindi, drawing on the other languages of the Eighth Schedule.
Languages whose inclusion has been requested (38)
Angika · Banjara · Bazika · Bhojpuri · Bhoti · Bhotia · Bundelkhandi · Chhattisgarhi · Dhatki · English · Garhwali (Pahari) · Gondi · Gujjar/Gujjari · Ho · Kachachhi · Kamtapuri · Karbi · Khasi · Kodava (Coorg) · Kok Barak · Kumaoni (Pahari) · Kurak · Kurmali · Lepcha · Limbu · Mizo (Lushai) · Magahi · Mundari · Nagpuri · Nicobarese · Pahari (Himachali) · Pali · Rajasthani · Sambalpuri/Kosali · Shaurseni (Prakrit) · Siraiki · Tenyidi · Tulu
As the Ministry notes, it is hard to fix any criterion that separates a language from a dialect; committees in 1996 and 2003 could not settle one.
The 11 Classical Languages
A category the Government of India created on 12 October 2004. Pali and Prakrit are classical but are not in the Eighth Schedule.
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12 October 2004
Tamil
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25 November 2005
Sanskrit
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31 October 2008
Telugu
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31 October 2008
Kannada
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8 August 2013
Malayalam
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1 March 2014
Odia
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3 October 2024
Marathi
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3 October 2024
Pali
Not in the Eighth Schedule -
3 October 2024
Prakrit
Not in the Eighth Schedule -
3 October 2024
Assamese
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3 October 2024
Bengali
- High antiquity of its early texts or recorded history over a period of 1,500–2,000 years.
- A body of ancient literature or texts considered a heritage by generations of speakers.
- Knowledge texts, especially prose texts, in addition to poetry, epigraphical and inscriptional evidence.
- The classical language and literature could be distinct from its current form or discontinuous with later forms of its offshoots.
Scripts through history
From the undeciphered Harappan signs and Ashoka’s Brahmi to Nagari, Sharada, Gurmukhi, Modi and Devanagari.
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Harappan period
The Harappan script
Harappan seals carry signs of a script that remains undeciphered. It was evidently not alphabetical — it has between 375 and 400 signs — and was written from right to left; the longest inscription has about 26 signs.
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Ashoka’s time (3rd century BCE)
Brahmi
Most of Ashoka’s Prakrit inscriptions were written in Brahmi, which NCERT calls the mother of all regional scripts of India: most scripts used to write modern Indian languages derive from it. The earliest decoded inscriptions, in Brahmi on the Ashokan edicts, are almost 2,300 years old.
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Ashoka’s time, the north-west
Kharosthi, Aramaic and Greek
Some Ashokan Prakrit inscriptions in the north-west were written in Kharosthi; Aramaic and Greek scripts were used for inscriptions in Afghanistan. Kharosthi was later read by comparing Indo-Greek coins that carried kings’ names in both Greek and Kharosthi.
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c. 4th century CE
Brahmi travels overseas
Around the 4th century CE, the region of present-day Malaysia adopted a script based on India’s Brahmi script.
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Harsha’s reign (7th century CE)
Nagari, precursor to Devanagari
A copper-plate inscription found at Banskhera in Uttar Pradesh carries King Harsha’s own signature — ‘By my own hand, the great king of kings, Shri Harsha’ — in Nagari script, a precursor to Devanagari.
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6th–12th centuries CE
Sharada
Sharada Peetha in Kashmir, a renowned centre of learning that flourished between the 6th and 12th centuries CE, was a key site in the development of the Sharada script; its legacy earned Kashmir the name Sharada Desh.
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Rashtrakuta period
Old Kannada
An inscription of the Rashtrakuta emperor Amoghavarsha Nripatunga in a Karnataka village temple is written in old Kannada script; he composed works in both Sanskrit and Kannada. Later, Vijayanagara’s royal orders were signed ‘Shri Virupaksha’, usually in the Kannada script.
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Guru Angad’s time
Gurmukhi
Guru Angad compiled the compositions of Baba Guru Nanak, adding his own, in a new script known as Gurmukhi.
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Shivaji’s time (17th century CE)
Modi and Devanagari under the Marathas
The Modi script, a cursive form of Devanagari, was the main script of Maratha correspondence. Chhatrapati Shivaji’s coins used the Devanagari script — an assertion of cultural identity.
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British period
Urdu
Urdu developed in the Ganga-Yamuna plains from the Hindi/Hindavi spoken there, taking in words from Arabic and Persian. It replaced Persian as an official language of the British government in India, and it is listed in the Eighth Schedule. South of the Deccan it becomes Dakhini.
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1838
Brahmi is deciphered
Working backwards from Bengali and Devanagari manuscripts, scholars aided by Indian pandits compared letters with older specimens; after decades of work, James Prinsep, an officer of the East India Company’s mint, deciphered Ashokan Brahmi in 1838.
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1949–50
Hindi in Devanagari, and a handwritten Constitution
The Constituent Assembly’s compromise made Hindi in the Devanagari script the official language, with a gradual transition: English would continue for all official purposes for the first fifteen years, and provinces could choose a regional language for their own work. The original Constitution was handwritten — in English by Prem Behari Narain Raizada and in Hindi by Vasant Krishan Vaidya.
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1956
States drawn on linguistic lines
After popular movements for linguistic states — Potti Sriramulu’s fast led to a separate Andhra state being announced in December 1952 — the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 created 14 states and six union territories.
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Today
The ₹ symbol
The symbol of the Indian rupee is derived from the letter र of the Devanagari script; its top line, the shiro-rekha, gives it an Indian identity.
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Literature
Sangam literature
The Sangam literature, the oldest in south India, is a set of anthologies of Tamil poems; ‘sangam’ refers to an assembly of poets.
How we check: the language lists come from the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Press Information Bureau, and the script history from NCERT textbooks; our build fails unless their key phrases are found in the source itself. We do not map where languages are spoken.