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 586

cxx
VEDIC HYMNS.
or suppression of vowels carried out on the largest scale", we find in Sanskrit, too, such double forms as prithvi or prithivî, adhi and dhi, api and pi, ava and va. The occurrence of such forms which have nothing to do with metrical considerations, but are perfectly legitimate from a grammatical point of view, would encourage a tendency to treat two syllables—and particularly two short syllables—as one, whenever an occasion arose. There are, besides, in the Vedic Sanskrit a number of forms where, as we saw, a long syllable has to be pronounced as two. In some of these cases this pronunciation is legitimate, i.e. it preserves an original dissyllabic form which in course of time had become monosyllabic. In other cases the same process takes place through a mistaken sense of analogy, where we cannot prove that an original dissyllabic form had any existence even in a prehistoric state of language. The occurrence of a number of such alternate forms would naturally leave a general impression in the minds of poets that two short syllables and one long syllable were under certain circumstances interchangeable. So considerable a number of words in which a long syllable has to be pronounced as two syllables has been collected by Professors Kuhn, Bollensen, and others, that no doubt can remain on this subject. Vedic poets, being allowed to change a semivowel into a vowel, were free to say nāsatyā and nāsátýā, VIII, 5, 32; prithivyās and prithivýāh; pitroh and pitřöh, I, 31, 4. They could separate compound words, and pronounce ghritānnah or ghrita-annah, VII, 3, 1. They could insert a kind of shewa or svarabhakti in words like sãmne or sāmne, VIII, 6, 47; dhāmne or dhāmne, VIII, 92, 25; arāvnah and arāvnah, IX, 63, 5. They might vary between pānti and panti, I, 41, 2; yāthănă and yāthănă, 1, 39, 3; nidhātoh and nidhātoh, I, 41, 9; tredhā and trednā, I, 34, 8; dēvāh and devāh (besides devâsah), I, 23, 24; rodass and rodasī, I, 33, 9; 59, 4; 64, 9; and rodasyoh, I, 33, 5; 59, 2; 117, 10;
. See the important chapters on "Kürzung der Vokale' and 'Tilgung der Vokale' in Corssen's 'Aussprache des Lateinischen ;' and more especially his remarks on the so-called irrational vowels in Plautus, ibid. vol. ii, p. 70.
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