Language and Literature flourished in India during the Classical period.  Material from the Vedas and the Vedic literature were codified into knowledge texts which developed as aphorism sutra literature.  Books on social conduct dharma, astronomy jyotiá¹£a, rituals kalpa, recitation chanda and grammar vyākaraṇa were composed.  After the formalization of the rules of grammar, these codes were developed into organized texts śāstra, that have become foundational to Indian culture.  The book on grammar aṣṭādhyāyÄ« by Panini and the book on drama nāṭyaśāstra have received worldwide application.  Buddhist literature spread to southeast Asia.

The Vedas were first analyzed by the grammarian Yaska in 6^th century BCE.  He tried to dissect the words out of the Vedic recitations.  Yāska categorized words into four classes: noun nāma, verb ākhyāta, prefix upasarga, and conjuncts nipāta.  Phonetic units as syllables were already in use from the older languages and another grammarian Pāṇini applied these in analyzing the Vedic recitations.  Through extensive analysis and leaning on the works on ten other previous grammarians, Panini in 5^th century BCE discovered the rules of human speech in forming a word and composing a sentence.  The alphabet māheÅ›varasÅ«trāṇi was organized in fourteen verses. He enunciated phonemic unit varṇa and divided the speech sounds into two classes: consonants vyañjana (breathing related) and vowels svara (voice related) Figure 1.  He noticed three levels of intonations, high-pitch udātta, low-pitch anudatta and medium-pitch svarita.  Further he coded three time-durations in creating an utterance: short hrasva, long dÄ«rgha, and prolonged pluta.  He categorized that empirically the vowel has to carry the consonant to express the utterance Figure 2.

For many millennia people in Northern-India spoke ÅšaurasenÄ«, MāgadhÄ«, AvantÄ«, Ardhamāgadhı̄, Māhārāṣṭrı̄, and others.  Vararuchi compiled Prākrá¹­a-Prakāśa, a Prakrit grammar Figure 3.  Buddhist literature was composed in Pāli, a hybridized language of MāgadhÄ« and Sanskrit.  A parallel religion, Jaina scholars composed their literature in Prāká¹›it.

Most Indian and east Asian scripts originated from BrāhmÄ« script. Figure 7 exhibits what language evolved from which possible origin. 

Structured grammar helped create formal literature of drama, poetry and prose.  Original material developed in Sanskrit, Prakrit and other languages.  A playwright Bhasa is known to have produced feature-length plays for stage production around 5^th century BCE. His many manuscripts are being lately discovered.  The art of storytelling took a formal form with the bards traveling around the country thus helping to build a national literary foundation. 

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