Linguistic history of the Indian subcontinent

Since the Iron Age in India, the native languages of the Indian subcontinent are divided into various language families, of which the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian are the most widely spoken. There are also many languages belonging to unrelated language families such as Munda (from Austroasiatic family) and Tibeto-Burman (from Trans-Himalayan family), spoken by smaller groups. Indo-Aryan languages Proto-Indo-Aryan Proto-Indo-Aryan is a proto-language hypothesized to have been the direct ancestor of all Indo-Aryan languages. It would have had similarities to Proto-Indo-Iranian, but would ultimately have used Sanskritized phonemes and morphemes.