Collected Articles Of LA Schwarzschild On Indo Aryan 1953 1979

Author(s): Royce Wiles
Publisher: Australian National University

Page 98

L. A. SCHWARZSCHILD
a number of variant morphs. Scribal and metrical features may be involved, but these do not account for all cases. It is possible that such forms were not in completely free variation with one another, but were syntactically and semantically conditioned, however subtly, An attempt is made here to illustrate this from the evidence of the locative singular masculine-neuter endings of nouns and adjectives in -a in Jaina Prakrit.
78
Two main types of endings are involved:
i.
corresponding to the Sanskrit -
ii. -mşi, -mhi. -mmi and -mmi derived from the Sanskrit pronominal ending -smin.
B. REGIONAL VARIATION OF THE ENDING -smin
The different forms derived from -smin are without doubt dialectally conditioned. The clusters sibilant + nasal, as in -smin, have undergone changes in Middle Indo-Aryan, but owing to the intricate pattern of dialectal diffusion it is difficult to assess the exact regional distribution of the various developments. That such widely different forms cannot belong to one and the same dialect has already been stressed in the case of -sn- by Lüders (1952: 130):
'Ich halte es für ausgeschlossen, dass die Verbindung des Zischlautes und in demselben Dialekte und noch dazu in demselben Worte bald zu -sin- bald zu-nk-entwickelt haben sollte.'
Lüders comes to the conclusion that the forms retaining the sibilant are eastern in origin, and those showing the change-sn>-nh- are western.
The situation with regard to -sm is basically similar: the change of s to h in a sibilant + nasal cluster is characteristically western in origin. This is shown by the Aśokan inscriptions (Mehendale 1948: 26):
-176
VARIANT FORMS OF THE LOCATIVE IN MIDDLE INDO-ARTAN 79
northwestern
western elsewhere
-smin
But in the literary Middle Indo-Aryan dialects the situation was more complex, and there was even some differentiation in the development of -smin according to whether it occurred in the nominal declension system on the one hand, or in combination with monosyllabic pronominal stems on the other. The situation can be summarised as follows:
Magadhi Śauraseni
Jain Sauraseni
Pali
Nominal Declension -ahim
(-e)
mmi, -mhi (rare)
Ardha-Magadhi Mähäräṣṭri, Jain Mähäräştri Apabhramla
-smi -mhi -si
Pronouns ja, ta-, ka
-ssim
-mmi, -mhi
-mhi, -smim (Sanskrit borrowing)
-msi, -mmi, -mmi
-177
-mmi, -mi nhim, (-)
but note the pronoun assim
C. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENDING -smin
1. The Sauraseni and Magadhi locatives of the type tassim, tassim, like the Asokan -si reflect 'regular' phonetic changes with the assimilations of -m- to the preceding sibilant (Pischel: 6 65, Sen: 69). The corresponding Magadhi nominal ending-ahim shows the further development of -sm- to -->-->-- This has been explained by the phonetic weakness of terminational elements in Indo-Aryan' (Turner 1927: 230). But the status of terminational element is not in itself connected with phonetic weakness: after all-smin is a terminational element in the locative pronominal form ta-smin. It is mainly a matter of accentuation. In tasmin the consonant cluster -sm-occurred at the beginning of the second syllable where it was in the immediate vicinity of the stress accent (Pischel 46), hence the