They are the sources of all the Aryan languages of modern India. From the Apabhramça are derived Sindhi, Western Panjabi, and Kashmiri; from Çauraseni come Eastern Panjabi and Hindi (the old Avanti), as well as Gujarati; while from the two forms of Magadhi are descended Marathi on the one hand, and the various dialects of Bengal on the other. These modern vernaculars, which began to develop from about 1000 A.D., are no longer inflexional languages, but are analytical like English, forming an interesting parallel in their development from ancient Sanskrit to the Romance dialects in their derivation from Latin. They have developed literatures of their own, which are based entirely on that of Sanskrit. The non-Aryan languages of the Dekhan, the Dravidian group, including Telugu, Canarese, Malayalam, and Tamil, have not indeed been ousted by Aryan tongues, but they are full of words borrowed from Sanskrit, while their literature is dominated by Sanskrit models. CHAPTER II THE VEDIC PERIOD On the very threshold of Indian literature more than three thousand years ago, we are confronted with a body of lyrical poetry which, although far older than the literary monuments of any other branch of the Indo-European family, is already distinguished by refinement and beauty of thought, as well as by skill in the handling of language and metre. From this point, for a period of more than a thousand years, Indian literature bears an exclusively religious stamp; even those latest productions of the Vedic age which cannot be called directly religious are yet meant to further religious ends. This is, indeed, implied by the term "Vedic." For veda, primarily signifying "knowledge" (from vid, "to know"), designates "sacred lore," as a branch of literature. Besides this general sense, the word has also the restricted meaning of "sacred book."