Amrita Collected Papers by A M Ghatage

SR No.: 006968
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Smarak Nidhi Ahmedabad
Total Pages: 530
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

Page 110

Māhärāștri Language and Literature
101
which is on increase in later-day works is the choice and favour shown to Sanskrit words which undergo no phonetic change or minimum change while coming over to the Prākrit language and which are technically called Tatsamas. This was again due to the desire of the writer to bring up his work as near Sanskrit as possible. On the whole this tendency of writing Prākrit in a purely Sanskritic manner must have been the chief cause of removing these popular languages far away from the spoken dialects of the people their original source and transforming them into literary languages.
The changes that have affected the Sanskrit vocabulary while coming over to this Prākrit are of some interest. There is, first of all changes in the genders) of words which differ in few cases between Sanskrit and Prākrit. Words like sarad, prāvrt, and tarani which are feminine in Sanskrit are regarded in Prākrit as masculine. Similarly words which end in s or n and which are neuter in Sanskrit usually become masculine in Prākrit. A few purely neuter words like aksi and vacana now slowly take on the role of masculine words while a few originally masculine words like guna become neuter. Words ending in įmā and the word añjali now become feminine while bāhu when in the form of bāhā is regarded as feminine. If we look a little scrutinisingly at these changes we find that the rules which are operating here are the natural effects of the tendency of regarding the grammatical gender to be determined by the ending vowel of the word and not on the intrinsic nature of the object denoted by the word. Therefore if a word is found to end in à or i it is regarded as feminine in gender for the majority of words of these endings in Sanskrit are feminine. This is well exemplified by the case of anjali and bahu when it becomes bāhā, the first of them lengthens its ending vowel in Prākrit while the second now ends in ā. The three words dāman, śiras and nabhas, because they become dāmam, siram and nahaṁ in Prākrit remain neuter while others which become jaso tamo regularly become masculine. There is further some confusion between masculine and neuter nouns which can ultimately be traced to the similarity of forms of these two classes. The evidence of Prākrit, it will be seen, is in full agreement with Brugmann's theory of the origin of the grammatical gender40.
In the field of phonology of this Prākrit we find nearly all the laws of phonetic change working in more or less general manner. Changes in the quantity of vowels due to the loss or shift of the accent are illustrated by the shortening of the vowels in words 41 like pānīya, alika, karısa, śirisa and lengthening in prakata, pravacana, and others. These changes in the place of the accent itself are due to the fact that the accent is chiefly a stress accent