Indian literature
Sometime in the first half of the 2 ND millennium BC Aryan peoples from the northwest entered the Indian subcontinent and displaced the Indus Valley civilization of what is now Pakistan (see Indus Valley civilization). The language of the Aryans was Sanskrit, which eventually became the classic literary language of Hinduism, the leading religion of India. Since about 1400 BC India has had a continuous literature in Sanskrit, which still remains a sacred and learned language for Hindus. The impact of the early literature cannot be overestimated because it had such a powerful impact on later works. From about the 1st century AD there developed a literature in Tamil, which has also persisted in literary use until the present. Much later, from the 12 Th century on, literature's in several other languages appeared—in Hindi, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi , and Urdu, among others. And from the 11 Th century an extensive Islamic literature, primarily in Persian and Urdu, developed as a...