Languages – The Vehicle 

Since the dawn of civilization, languages have been playing key role as medium of discourse everywhere in the world. Language is a necessary component of any discourse in which the discourse is shaped and in turn it also gets re-shaped by the discourse. Language is a medium of expression and means of interaction. The ideas, views, emotions, arguments, sentiments etc. may be expressed in language. The expressions may be in the form of speeches, writings, symbols or signs but the human beings have been using language since time immemorial. The civilizational, knowledge, its history, philosophy, science, technology and other information are preserved in different languages while contemporary world also has its functioning conducted in various languages. 

In ancient times Samskrit was the language of intellectual discourse throughout India. Later, Pali, Prakrit and Apabhramsa also became important languages. Indian civilizational knowledge system has been preserved in these languages to a large extent even today. The vast corpus of Samskrit, Pali, Prakrit and Apabhramsa encompasses scientific, technical, philosophical religious as well as a rich tradition of poetry and drama. Apart from these languages, a number of other languages like Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Oriya, Assamese etc. too flowered in course of time. A large numbers of local languages and dialects also became important. Foreign languages too have now become important given the close interaction the world is experiencing today in almost every field between different countries, cultures and civilizations. 

It is very much required to study and explore these languages of intellectual discourse. It is only through study of these languages that the Indian civilizational knowledge system may be understood, re-defined, disseminated and propagated. For this immense efforts need to be made in enriching these with modern terminologies and discourse. Therefore it is required to attract the attention of the scholars towards the study of Languages so as to develop them as effective medium of intellectual discourse in India by taking measures to strengthen them through vocabulary building and by encouraging further research in these areas.