Sanskrit and other Indian languages

The Report of the Sanskrit Commission states:

47. Our Modern Indian languages, both Aryan and Dravidian, are in the same boat. They have been, all of them, under the aegis of Sanskrit. The Modern Aryan languages were all born in the lap of Sanskrit; and as for the Dravidian languages, ever since their ear- liest literary use, they have been nurtured by Sanskrit. Even in the case of Tamil, although early Tamil literature, as in the Sangam texts, ‘shows certain special Tamil characteristics which are perhaps unique for Tamil, it is fully within the orbit of Sanskrit. As Siva- jnana-munivar has said in his commentary to the Tol-kappiyam, the oldest grammar of Tamil : "the nature of Tamil will not be clear to those who have not learnt Sanskrit" (vadanul unarndarkkanrit –Tamil iyalpu vilangadu: I Eluttalikaram, sutra 1). Tamil of the oldest Sangam texts shows a very good number of Sanskrit words, and the number goes on increasing with the centuries. The ideas in early Tamil literature as well as in that of later Tamil, and in all literatures in the other Dravidian languages, are the reflexes of what we have in the Sanskrit world. Words of Sanskrit also have been taken over along with these ideas. The best intellects, among the peoples speaking South Indian languages have by and large adopted Sanskrit for the expression of their ideas in the domains of serious thinking, as, for example, in Philosophy. As a matter of fact, neither the languages of the South nor of the North were used for the expression of higher thought by eminent authors of the land. It was to Sanskrit that they first turned, and, only after that, to the mother-tongue.