Historian Richard M. Eaton argues that there are two languages whose epic literature, poetry, and corpus of law, ethics, and philosophy molded the civilization of the subcontinent and its peoples. The first, obviously, was Sanskrit. The second was, when it arrived, every bit as foreign as English and came to be used as widely and in similar ways. In fact, by the 19th century India had produced a major body of literature in this language, as well as far more dictionaries than its native country had. – Literary Hub