Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 357

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JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BOMBAY
phone of s) into a single sibilant in Pali. In other words, occurrences of Pāli s which correspond to Skt. ś never passed through the stage of ś. Together with Avesta, Pāli saw the merger, probably on the Iranian soil, of IE k and s into s.
Pāli, like Avesta, shows the development of final -as >-0. But in this respect there is a slight difference which we would do well to remember. It is also important to bring to notice one point in this regard which perhaps has not been done before. In Sansktit itself final aš > .o in certain conditions. But it also shows in sandhi only the final -a, or -as is either preserved or it changes to -aś and -aş. Now if we imagine that Pāli developed from the spoken form of Sanskrit and if we also imagine that the sandhi rules of grammarians were based on the spoken forms of Sanskrit-and we have to imagine both these things--then it is impossible for us to believe that Pali devo āyāti developed from deva āyāti, or Pāli devo carati developed from devas carati. We must imagine for the proper explanation of the nom.sg. forms of Pāli that already in very early times in some spoken dialect of Sanskrit the devo form was generalized so that we had in this dialect expressions like devo carati devo tarati etc. It is from such forms that we can explain Pāli nom.sg. -0 ending. In this respect Avesta slightly differs from Pali. Although it is also marked by the isogloss which used the ending -o irrespective of what followed in a continuous utterance, it has preserved as relics the sandhi forms like išsavas ca, išavas cit, nəmas tē.
One more phonetic feature also deserves attention. In Sanskrit no consonant cluster of two stops can occur at the beginning of a word. But a cluster of this type is known to occur in the Girnar version of Asokan inscriptions. True, this cluster does not occur in Pali, but this point is worth mentioning because in many other respects Pāli and the Girnar dialect go together. The cluster in question is db which corresponds to Skt. dv. Thus Sk. dvādaśa is represented twice in Girnar version as dbādasa, but Pali has bārasa. In Avesta we find a similar feature which points to a common isogloss. In Gatha Avesta dv occurs as it is or as dab and in younger Avestan it is represented by tb or b.
Pali differs from Māgadhi in respect of the sounds r and i. Whereas Páli has both of them, Magadhi has only l. In this case, Sanskrit and probably early Pāli, are similar to Avesta for the early Vedic period. All apparently had only r. In later Vedic, and probably just about that time in Pāli, 1 förms begin to appear and
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