answers: Hindi
context: around the 3rd century BCE. The earliest epigraphic attestations of Tamil are generally taken to have been written shortly thereafter. Among Indian languages, Tamil has the most ancient non-Sanskritised Indian literature. Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods, Old Tamil (300 BCE – 700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present). The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from around the 2nd century BCE in caves and on pottery. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi. The earliest long text in Old Tamil is the Tolkāppiyam, </s> million native speakers and 122 which were spoken by more than 10,000 people. Two contact languages have played an important role in the history of India: Persian and English. Persian was the court language during the Mughal period in India. It reigned as an administrative language for several centuries until the era of British colonisation. English continues to be an important language in India. It is used in higher education and in some areas of the Indian government. Hindi, the most commonly spoken language in India today, serves as the "lingua franca" across much of North and Central India. However, </s> composing krithi, he is credited with turning the svarajati, originally used for dance, into a purely musical form. Malayalam is thought to have diverged from approximately the 6th century in the region coinciding with modern Kerala. The development of Malayalam as a separate language was characterized by a moderate influence from Sanskrit, both in lexicon and grammar, which culminated in the "Aadhyaathma Ramayanam", a version of the Ramayana by Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan which marked the beginning of modern Malayalam. Ezhuthachan's works also cemented the use of the Malayalam script, an alphabet blending the Tamil Vatteluttu alphabet with elements of the Grantha
question: which language is the first language in india