Department of English
| Historically, English originated from the fusion of closely related dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of Great Britain by Germanic (Anglo-Saxons) settlers by the 5th century – with the wordEnglish being derived from the name of the Angles, and ultimately from their ancestral region of Angeln (in what is nowSchleswig-Holstein). A significant number of English words are constructed based on roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the lingua franca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life. The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language due to Viking invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries. |
Department of Hindi
| Hindi language, member of the Indo-Aryan group within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the preferred official language of India, although much national business is also done in English and the other languages recognized in the Indian constitution. In India, Hindi is spoken as a first language by nearly 425 million people and as a second language by some 120 million more. Significant Hindi speech communities are also found in South Africa, Mauritius, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Uganda. |
Department of Maithili
| The term classical antiquity is often used to refer to history in the Old World from the beginning of recorded Greek history in 776 BC (First Olympiad). This roughly coincides with the traditional date of the founding of Rome in 753 BC, the beginning of the history of ancient Rome, and the beginning of the Archaic period in Ancient Greece. Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, the closure of the Platonic Academy in 529 AD, the death of the emperor Justinian I, the coming of Islam[8] or the rise ofCharlemagne as the end of ancient and Classical European history. In India, the period includes the early period of the Middle Kingdoms, and, in China, the time up to the Qin Dynasty is included. |
Department of Sanskrit
| Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and a literary and scholarly language in Jainism and Buddhism. Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand. Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Panini, around the 4th century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India is akin to that of Latin and Greek in Europe and it has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent, particularly in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. |
Department of Urdu
| Urdu is a register of Hindi-Urdu, identified with Muslims in South Asia. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an official language of five states. Based on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, Urdu developed under the influence of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic over the course of almost 900 years. It began to take shape in what is now Uttar Pradesh, India during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1527), and continued to develop under the Mughal Empire (1526–1858). Urdu is mutually intelligible with Standard Hindi spoken in India. Both languages share the same Indic base and are so similar in phonology and grammar that they appear to be one language. The combined population of Hindi and Urdu speakers is the fourth largest in the world. |