Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 546

lxxx
VEDIC HYMNS.
that, in order to uphold the rules they have themselves laid down, certain syllables are to be pronounced as two syllables.
We read in Sûtra 527: 'In a deficient pâda the Vyuha.
right number is to be provided for by protraction of semivowels (which were originally vowels), and of contracted vowels (which were originally two independent vowels). It is only by this process that the short syllable which has been lengthened in the Samhita, viz. the sixth, or the eighth, or the tenth, can be shown to have occupied and to occupy that place where alone, according to a former rule, a short syllable is liable to be lengthened. Thus we read:
I, 161, 11. udvatsvasmā äkrinotănā trinam. This would seem to be a verse of eleven syllables, in which the ninth syllable na has been lengthened. This, however, is against the system of the Prátisâkhya. But if we protract the semivowel v in udvatsv, and change it back into u, which it was originally, then we gain one syllable, the whole verse has twelve syllables, na occupies the tenth place, and it now belongs to that class of cases which is included in a former Satra, 523. The same applies to X, 103, 13, where we read:
pretā gāyātā närah. This is a verse of seven syllables, in which the fifth syllable is lengthened, without any authority. Let us protract pretâ by bringing it back to its original component elements pra itâ, and we get a verse of eight syllables, the sixth syllable now falls under the general observation, and is lengthened in the Samhità accordingly.
The same rules are repeated in a later portion of the Pratisåkhya. Here rules had been given as to the number of syllables of which certain metres consist, and it is added (Sûtras 972, 973) that where that number is deficient, it should be completed by protracting contracted vowels, and by separating consonantal groups in which semivowels (originally vowels) occur, by means of their corresponding vowel.
The rules in both places are given in almost identically
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