The various Indic dialects are known collectively as Prakrits ; they apparently developed from different forms of Sanskrit before the latter became a fixed, written language. A few became important written languages in their own right - perhaps most notably Pali , the language of the religious texts of Buddhism. Ultimately, the Prakrits were the progenitors of the Indo-European languages of India today. These include Bengali , Hindi , Urdu , and Romany (the language of the "Gypsies"). (The Indian subcontinent is also home to many non-Indo-European languages.)

The Iranian subgroup divides into Western and Eastern (this latter also having a Northeastern subdivision). The oldest attested member of Iranian is Avestan, a member of the (North)Eastern subgroup. Avestan was a religious language, and was the language of Zoroaster (also known in the West as Zaruthustra ). It is traditionally dated to around 600 BCE, although some linguists see similarities to Vedic Sanskrit that would argue for a date circa 1000 BCE. No modern descendants of Avestan remain. Some of the Northeastern languages belonged to historically significant groups. Among them are the Scythians (and the Cimmerians , if they are in fact distinct from the Scythians), the Sarmatians (some of whom settled in the Danube basin; Sarmatians also defended the borders of Roman Britain as mercenaries in the second century CE), and the Alans , some of whom penetrated the Iberian peninsula and eventually established themselves in North Africa. The Asian descendants of the Alans are the Ossetes of the central Caucasus, whose language is still spoken by well over half a million people. Sogdian was the language of the fabled kingdom of Samarkand and survives among the Yoghnobis of Tadzikhistan.

Western Iranian is represented by Old Persian, Middle Persian (Pahlavi ), and Modern Persian, which is known as Farsi. Kurdish is another member of this group.