After the decline of the Harappan civilization, a people who called themselves Aryans became dominant in north India. They were speakers of an early form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language closely related to ancient Persian and more distantly related to Latin, Greek, Celtic, and their modern descendants, such as English. For example, the Sanskrit nava, “ship,” is related to the English word naval; deva, “god,” to divine; and raja, “ruler,” to regal. The word Aryan itself comes from Arya, “noble” or “pure” in Sanskrit, and has the same linguistic root as Iran and Ireland. The Aryans flourished during the Vedic Age (ca. 1500–500 B.C.E.). Named for the Vedas, a large and significant body of ancient sacred works written in Sanskrit, this period witnessed the Indo-Aryan development of the caste system and the Brahmanic religion and the writing of the great epics that represent the earliest form of Indian literature.