Sound Synthesis in Indo European Indo Iranian and Sanskrit

Author(s): Satya Swarup Mishra
Publisher: Ashutosh Prakashan Sansthan

Page 20

2 SOUND SYNTHESIS IN IE, IIR & SANSKRIT
a-ti; (2) Sandhi of a upasarga with a verb from, e. g. Skt upāsate <upa+asate; (3) Sandhi in compounds, e.g. Skt maheśaḥ < mahā+iśaḥ; and (4) fourthly Sandhi of a word (= an inflected form) with another word in a sentence, e.g. Skt ko gacchati <kaḥ+gacchati. The first three types are categorized as nitya sandhi or compulsory sandhi and the last one is called vivakşa sandhi or optional sandhi. (sandhir ekapade nitya, nitya dhātūpasargayoḥ; nitya samase, vakye tu, sa vivakṣām apekṣate). The division of sandhi into internal & external is supposed to cover all these four types. But the history and development of sandhi shows that the first category is to be taken as internal sandhi, the second as semi-internal sandhi (i. e. more of internal sandhi type than of external sandhi type), the third, i.e. sandhi in compounds, may be termed as semi-external sandhi (i.e. more of external sandhi type, than of internal sandhi type), and the fourth is to be taken as external sandhi proper.
It is interesting to note that the western scholars categorise the first as internal and the second, third & fourth as external, whereas the traditional Indian grammarians categorise the first three as nitya (lit. eternal) or compulsory and the last one as vivakṣā (lit. according to speaker's desire), or optional. This clearly show that the first type is the most ancient one. Sandhi first of all started with these forms. In other words internal sandhi is the oldest one and the internal sandhi forms were directly inherited by the historical languages with due phonetic changes and they were more compulsory than the rest. From this it passed on to the second and third types, where the second type followed the internal sandhi more rigidly than the third and finally the fourth type of sandhi