CLASSICAL LANGUAGE

According to Article 343, the official language of the India should be Hindi in Devanagari script. As per Eight schedules of the Indian constitution, we have 22 languages. In 2004 it was decided by the Indian Government to proclaim Indian Languages meeting certain requirements as “Classical Language”. 

Criteria 

ü  Extraordinary antiquity of its early transcripts or verified history over a period of 1500-2000 years.

ü  A body of ancient literature or texts, which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers.

ü  The literary tradition should be unique and not hired from another language community.

The classical language and literature being diverse from modern, there may also be a discontinuity among the classical language and its later forms or its sprouts

Classical Languages

ü  In 2004, Government of India declared Tamil as the Classical Language of India.

ü  In 2005, right after Tamil, the government declared Sanskrit as Classical Language of India. These two languages are undeniably parental sources for several languages belonging to the Indo-European family and the Dravidian family of language groups.

ü  The government gave the classical language status to Kannada and Telugu in 2008.

ü  Malayalam was declared as a classical language in 2013 and in 2014, Odiya was also given the status of the Classical language.