Proto-Indo-Aryan (sometimes Proto-Indic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. It is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. It is descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European. It is a Satem language.
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History
Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan (1500–300 BCE) which is directly attested as Vedic and Mitanni-Aryan. Indeed, Vedic and Mitanni-Aryan are very close to Proto-Indo-Aryan.
The Prakrits are also similar to Proto-Indo-Aryan.
Today, several Modern Indo-Aryan languages are extant.
Differences from Vedic
Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a small number of archaic features lost in Vedic.
One of these is the representation of Proto-Indo-European *l and *r. Vedic (as also most Iranian languages) merge both as /r/. Later, however, some instances Indo-European /l/ again surface in Classical Sanskrit, indicating the survival of the contrast in an early Indo-Aryan dialect parallel to Vedic. (A dialect with only /l/ is additionally posited to underlie Magadhi Prakrit.)
The common consonant cluster kṣ /kʂ/ of Vedic and later Sanskrit has a particularly wide range of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (PII) sources, which partly remain distinct in later Indo-Aryan languages: