[1] It is intended to reconstruct the language of the Indo-Aryans, who had migrated into the Indian subcontinent.
[4] Some of the Prakrits display a few minor features derived from Proto-Indo-Aryan that had already disappeared in Vedic Sanskrit.
Later, however, some instances of Indo-European /l/ again surface in Classical Sanskrit, indicating that the contrast survived in an early Indo-Aryan dialect parallel to Vedic.
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:[7] Most personal pronouns are identical between Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-Aryan and show modest differences between Proto-Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit *só Most numerals are identical between Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-Aryan.
Most number show minimal differences between Proto-Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit (e.g., the loss of the fricative sound *H).