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The Apabhramśa Language
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kh but medial kkh etc.
There remain a few more cases of nasal sounds which are neither nasal vowels nor nasal consonants. Such cases are amsu, daṁsana, samvarevi etc. where the nasal resonance is followed by eithers or v. In a strict synchronic sense we must set up a phoneme of anusvāra for them with a limited distribution. But we can as well conclude that this also is a case of archaism from the earlier Prākrit stage or possibly a mode of writing of a possible nasalised long vowel which was its later development in the New Indo-Aryan stage. A nasalised ✓ phoneme is well attested and is graphically represented as my or an anusvāra on the preceding syllable.
In addition, Apabhramsa shows a limited number of consonant clusters with r like priu, ghrum, broppinu, prassadi, vratu etc. which is certainly a dialectal feature known to the Prākrit grammarians and met with in some specific books or families of Mss. A similar dialectal feature is seen in the few examples.cited by Hemacandra in which the medial voiced consonants like g, gh, d, dh, b, bh are kept and to which the name saurasenism is given.
The other parts of Apabhramśa grammar are very briefly summarised here. The general effect has been to reduce the morphology of the language to the minimum. The declensions of nouns tend to merge into each other and we have at most only three types with the endings a, i and u. The distinction between Masculine and Neuter is disappearing and the formal difference between these and the Feminine is also slight. Thus the Ablative singular of a number of different words would run formally alike : narahe, phalahe, girihe, muddhahe, devihe etc. The distinction among the cases is also breaking down and we can at best set up such syncratic groups as NominativeAccusative, Instrumental-Locative and Ablative-Genitive. This is very close to the distinction between the Direct and Oblique of the NIA. What is new is a kind of novel pattern between the singular and the plural of the same case which is marked by the mere absence or presence of the nasalisation. Compare Gen. naraha and naraha, Abl. narahu and narahü, Inst. narahi and narahi, Loc. girihi and girih i. There is also a tendency towards vowel harmony between the stem vowel and the vowel of the inflection. Compare girihi, guruh ū and narahã. Many of the pronominal forms are assimilated to the nominal type and most of the deviations, like amhe, amhi, amhāsu, tena, tāo are either borrowals from Prākrits or less likely archaisms.