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 15

Amrita
to the glide. This same glide is observable in the change of Anglo-Saxon slumerian into English slumber and Latin numerum into French nombre. Though the two cases are quite parallel as regards the development of the glide the change illustrated by English and French shows a vital difference from the change in Prākrit. In both the European languages the two members of the group (for we must assume an intermediate step where the groups arose) are kept along with the glide in the words slumber and nombre, but the Prākrit words drop one of the members of the original groups. The preservation was possible in the earlier case because the English word has developed a new syllabic sound (a) while in French the nasal sound has only nasalized the preceding vowel. On the contrary in the absence of both these possibilities, in the Prākrits the group of two consonants was all that was needed to preserve the syllabic nature of the word and quite naturally the additional sound of -s- or -- was lost. From this it is but an obvious deduction that such a conception of the essential nature of a word would not allow a group of three consonants, which is actually the case in Prākrit. Similarly a conjunct at the beginning of a word served no useful purpose for the syllabic structure of the word and was uniformly lost.
This very principle would explain that striking change of dropping most of the intervocalic consonants which gives these languages their distinctive appearance. As in other languages, notably in "French, the intervocalic consonants became voiced, turned into spirants, and as spirants were rare in Indo-Aryan, were finally lost. But their loss was in no way detrimental to the conception of the word as viewed by the speakers who stressed above all the number and sequence of the syllables which were kept in tact in spite of the loss of the consonants. As compared to the vast number of words where the syllables are preserved, the cases showing the loss of syllables are quite negligible and most of them are simple cases of contraction. It is only when the Middle Indo-Aryan period is over and the New Indo-Aryan period has begun that we find a change in the idea of the nature of the word and the consequent loss of syllables accompanied by other changes.
Most of the vowel changes follow the same principle. It is obvious that the diphthongs -ai- and -au- and the long vowels -e- and -o- are not different in their metrical length and following a primitive Sanskrit tendency the former are reduced to the latter in Prākrits. But more interesting is the
tion of two new sounds, the short -e- and -o- under the pressure of the same tendency. In Sanskrit the long -7- and -7- when followed by groups of