Modern Indian languages comprise of the Indo-European languages, Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages. Apart from the Indian languages there are some other languages that are spoken by the inhabitants residing in several parts of India, are originated from Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman linguistic families.

The appearance of the modern Indo-Aryan languages dates from the period after A.D. 1000, when already the division of the regional languages was assuming the shape that is familiar today. The main block of Indo-Aryan stretches as a solid mass across north and central India. In addition there are certain minor and eccentric languages outside the main block, which are of no literary importance but are often of great interest for linguistic history. Such are the Dardic languages of the north-west, which are both extraordinarily numerous and remarkably archaic. The gypsy languages were taken to the Near East and Europe by itinerant tribes who probably left India about A.D. 500 or shortly after. The only literary language outside the main block is Sinhalese, which was introduced into the island by settlers from north India about the time of Lord Buddha.

Since there were no major geographical obstacles inhibiting mutual contact, the modern languages of the main block of Indo-Aryan developed very much on parallel lines. Eventually the emergence of certain Indian languages followed. The languages are Gujarati and Marathi (the language of the people of south-west), Sindhi and Punjabi (west), Kashmiri (north-west), Nepali (north-east), Assamese, Bengali, Oriya (east) and the language of the people residing in central India are Hindi, Western and Eastern. With these languages Rajasthani to the west and Bihari to the east are counted.

The literary development of these languages took place at various times, Marathi and Gujarati being among the earliest. Linguistic difference was often associated with differences of alphabet, e.g. in the case of Oriya, Bengali, Punjabi (Gurmukhi), and Gujarati, which have alphabets of their own differing from the usual. Of greater importance was the introduction of the Arabic script by the Muslims for certain languages. In the case of Hindi this led to the development of two different literary languages, Urdu and Hindi, based originally on the same spoken dialect.

Besides the Muslim influence the development of the modern Indo-Aryan languages followed the same lines. The early literature was predominantly religious and almost exclusively poetic. In form and subject-matter it was based on Sanskrit models. An important new feature in the modern languages, as opposed to the earlier Middle Indo-Aryan, was the introduction, on an extensive scale, of Sanskrit loanwords. In Prakrit language, even at the Apabhramsa stage, words might in fact be derived from Sanskrit language, but they always appeared disguised as Prakrit by the operation of phonetic rules. At the stage of Modern Indo-Aryan this practice was no longer executable and the Sanskrit words had to be introduced as such. Another consideration was the dearth of the vernacular languages, due to the continued use of Sanskrit at the expense of the spoken languages down to a late date. This was a situation which could only be dealt with by drawing extensively on the vocabulary of Sanskrit. In the Muslim-dominated literary languages, a similar position was held by Arabic and Persian.

Till the end of the eighteenth century, the development of the modern Indo-Aryan languages continued on these lines. After the eighteenth century the full effect of British rule and European civilization began to be felt. The introduction of printing, which took place in north India about this time, had a profound effect on the development of language and literature. Works in prose, as well as poetry, began to be produced, the range of subjects for literature was extended and modernized, and literary output progressively increased. The processes initiated at this period have continued with increasing tempo till the present day.

Among the modern Indo-Aryan languages, the position of Hindi is of outstanding importance, since it has been officially accepted as the national language of India. Taking Western and Eastern Hindi together, along with their various dialects, Hindi occupies the most central position and also covers a much larger area than any other language. On the other hand the modern form of literary Hindi was developed very late, in fact not until the end of the eighteenth century. The reason for this was that earlier writers had used other dialects of Hindi (e.g. Braj Bhasha or the Eastern Hindi of Tulsi Das), whereas the Khari boll, originally the dialect of the Delhi-Meerut area, on which both Hindi and Urdu are based, was developed in the first place under the influence of the Muslims. The first literary language to emerge from it was therefore Urdu, written in the Arabic script, and borrowing an extensive vocabulary from Arabic and Persian. At the same time, in a somewhat simplified form, it gained extensive currency as a non-literary colloquial, and this is still very widely used. On the other hand literary Hindi, written in the Devanagari alphabet and drawing for vocabulary on Sanskrit, hardly appears at all until the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The partition of the subcontinent between India and Pakistan had naturally considerable effects on language. The principle result was that Hindi was adopted as the official language of India, while Urdu occupies a similar position in Pakistan. Bengal was divided into two, with consequent differences developing between the Bengali of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and that of West Bengal. A similar division took place in the case of Punjabi.

Moreover, the pre-Aryan languages of India are grouped into two families, Dravidian and Munda (or Kolarian), but languages of literary status are found only among the former group. These are the Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada languages, occupying respectively the states of Madras, Kerala, Andhra, and Karnataka. In addition there are a number of unwritten, tribal languages in central India, and the family is represented even as far away as Baluchistan by Brahul, which has also remained a non-literary language. It is quite likely that the extension of Dravidian was originally much wider than at present, and that it has receded before the advance of Indo-Aryan. It is also possible that other families existed which have been displaced by Indo-Aryan, leaving no trace. The Indus civilization possessed a written language, but it is undeciphered and nothing can be said about its nature and affiliation.