India is often perceived by the general public as an ancient civilization steeped in age-old tradition resistant to outside influence. History shows the very opposite to have been true throughout the ages. The remarkable aptitude of India at integrating loans and recasting them on its own terms into thoroughly new creations may owe something to the historical process that led to the make-up of its population: the slow penetration, spread over centuries, of Indo-European speakers arriving amid populations ethnically and linguistically unrelated to them.

Source

From The Mughal Period: A Pluralist Society in Heritage of the Mughal World (Philip Jodidio, editor)