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SEPTEMBER, 1914) NOTES ON GRAMMAR OF THE OLD WESTERN RAJASTHANI
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NOTES ON THE GRAMMAR OF THE OLD WESTERN RAJASTHANI WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO APABHRAMCA AND
TO GUJARATI AND MARWARI. BY. DR L. P. TESSITORI, UDINE, ITALY.
(Continued from p. 92.)
CHAPTER III.
Declension of Nouns. $ 53. Old Western Rajasthani possesses all the three gonders of Sanskrit and Apabhrama, and so do Modern Gujarati and Mârwâți. As a rule the Sanskrit gender is retained both in tatsamas and tadbhavas ; exceptions, however, are not wanting, as is to be observed in cognate vernaculars. In many of these exceptions, indeed, the change of gender had already been effected in the Prakrit ; in the others it took place subsequently and was brought about either by the influence of a synonym of a different gender or, in the case of a few masculine nouns habitually used in the locative or instrumental, by mistaking for feminine the terminal oi, (<°aï) of the postpositions, with which they were construed. Illustrations of the different cases are :
kalatra (fem.) “Wife" (Yog. ii, 76; See § 133) Skt. kalatra-(neut.).
kâya (fem.) "Body" (P. 167,488, 578) < cf. Jaina Maharastri kâyâ, (fem.) (Bhavavairagyaçataka, 7) <Skt. kaya- (masc.),
deha (fem.) "Ditto" (P. 344) <Skt. deha- (masc., neut.), naka (neut.) "Nos" (P.311) <Pkt. pakko (masc.),
våļa (fem.) "Road" (P. 582) < Ap. vattâ (fem.) < Skt. vartmå, nominative from vartman (neut.),
vára (fem.) "Time, turn" <Skt. vára-(masc.), velu, velaü (masc.) "Creeper" (P. 548 ff.) <Pkt. velli, vella (fem.). -ni pari (fem.) "Like.." <Ap... paâră <Skt. prakârena (masc.) (See 883, 75).
In the case of vâra the change of gender was probably brought about through such locative constructions as the following:
ani (for a naž, see $ 10, (3)) vari “This time” (P. 315), biji (for bijaï) vára" A second time" (Dd.)
The noun âgi "Fire", which in some vernaculars has becomo feminine, has retained its original masculine gender in the Old Western Rajasthani (cf. Indr. 83).
$ 54. There are two numbers : singular and plural. In the direct cases (nominative, accusative, vocative) nouns often have only one form for both numbers, and in one oblique case (instrumental), a plural inflectional termination has come to be used for the singular also.
$ 55. The declension is partly inflectional and partly periphrastio. For the purpose of studying the former it will be convenient to divide nominal bases into two classes, viz. consonantal and vocal. Consonantal bases end in a consonant (or conjunot) followed by -a, which is dropped before all terminations. This class comprises all so-called "weak " tadbhavas and tatsamas in oa. Vocal bases may be subdivided into : a) bases ending in a vowel different from a, namely: o , oi, ou, ou, and b) bases ending in aa (Ap. aa <Skt.
aka). The former retain their terminal vowel before all terminations, the latter drop the final vowel, just like consonantal bases, and suffix the terminations to the penultimate a. In ordinary grammars the latter bases are called "strong ". They are all tadbhavas, but there is one class of tatsamas, viz. tatsamas in "aya, which is treated exactly tike them.
