ABSTRACTSanskrit is the oldest member of the Indo-Aryan group within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. The oldest form of Sanskrit known as Vedic, dates from the middle of the second millennium BC. Since the middle of the fi rst millennium BC, the later form of Sanskrit, known as Classical Sanskrit, has been the language of thousands of books and treatises on a variety of literary, religious, scientific, philosophical, and artistic topics. As a result of the use of Sanskrit for more than three millennia on the one hand, and the wide variety of Sanskrit texts on the other, Sanskrit lexical treasure has become one of the richest in the world. What follows is a brief survey of Sanskrit word-formation processes.
