Indo-Aryan languages
Modern Indo-Aryan languages descend from Old Indo-Aryan languages such as early Sanskrit, through Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Prakrits). The largest such languages in terms of L1 speakers are Hindi-Urdu (about 329 million), Bengali (242 million), Punjabi (about 120 million), Marathi, (112 million), Gujarati (60 million), Rajasthani (58 million), Bhojpuri (51 million), Odia (35 million), Maithili (about 34 million), Sindhi (25 million), Nepali (16 million), Assamese (15 million), and Chhattisgarhi (18 million). A 2005 estimate placed the total number of native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages at nearly 900 million.