New Delhi [India], October 3 (ANI): The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved to confer the status of classical language to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese, and Bengali languages.

The Government of India decided to create a new category of languages as "classical languages" on October 12, 2004, declaring Tamil as a classical language. The government also set a criterion for the status of classical language that the language must be of high antiquity in its early texts/recorded history over a thousand years, a body of ancient literature/texts that is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers, and the literary tradition must be original and not borrowed from another speech community.

A Linguistic Experts Committee (LEC) was constituted by the Ministry of Culture under Sahitya Akademi in Nov 2004 to examine the proposed languages for the status of classical language. The criteria were revised in Nov 2005, and Sanskrit was declared a classical language. The Government of India, has conferred status of classical languages to Tamil in 2004, Sanskrit in 2005, Telugu in 2008, Kannada in 2008, Malayalam in 2013, and Odia in 2014.