Saraiki (Perso-Arabic Script: سرائیکی), transliterated as Sarāikī and sometimes spelled Seraiki, Siraiki and Sarayeki, is a standardized written language of Pakistan belonging to the Indo-Aryan (Indic) languages. It is spoken by the Saraiki people in the Saraiki-speaking regions, also called as Saraikistan, in the heart of Pakistan. No mention of Saraiki as a unified identity is ever been made before the creation of Pakistan. Saraiki is based on a group of vernacular, historically unwritten dialects spoken by over 18 million people across the southern most half and the northwest of Punjab Province, southern districts of Dera Ismail Khan and Tank of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the adjacent border regions of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces, and nearly 70,000 migrants and their descendants in India who migrated as a result of the partition of India, and about a million population of Pakistani diaspora in different parts of the world especially the Middle East. Saraiki is also spoken in Afghanistan, albeit the total number of speakers there is still unknown.