Which two languages flourished alongside Sanskrit in Vedic ancient India?
Pali and Prakrit
The question asks which two languages flourished alongside Sanskrit in ancient Vedic India.
Sanskrit was the language of the Vedas, rituals and classical scholarship, used mainly by the learned and priestly class.
Alongside it, Prakrit languages developed as the natural spoken tongues of the common people, and Pali emerged as one such literary form of Prakrit.
Pali became the canonical language of early Buddhist scriptures (the Tripitaka), while Prakrit was used in Jain texts and in many royal inscriptions, including Ashoka's edicts.
Hindi and Urdu, Bengali and Tamil in their modern forms, and English and Persian all appeared or spread in far later periods, so none of those pairs fits the ancient Vedic setting.
Thus the two languages that coexisted with Sanskrit in that era were Pali and Prakrit.
Hence, the answer is Pali and Prakrit.
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