Sound Synthesis in Indo European Indo Iranian and Sanskrit

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

Page 49

CHAPTER V
OLD INDO-ARYAN VOWEL SYNTHESIS
36. Old Indo-Aryan Sound Synthesis
Old Indo-Aryan inherited the IE sound synthesis through Indo-Iranian. But QIA also has its own share in innovations, because of several linguistic changes of individual sounds and extension of one type of sandhi to other forms etc.
37. Old Indo-Aryan Vowel Synthesis
In vowel synthesis OIA has inherited the IIr type, with simplification of the sandhi of primary vowels due to merger of ǎ, ě, ǎ>ă.
OIA also presents some innovations in vowel synthesis. They are mainly due to shortening of vowels in some cases (e,g. a+i>e, ā+>o, a+r>ar), elision of a vowel in some cases (e.g. e+a>e', o+a>o' etc) and due to analogical extensions of certain sandhis to others (i.c. is an artificial creation of grammarians after ă+ă>ā, ì+i>i etc since original F has become ir, är in OIA).
The cases may be taken up now one by one.
38. OIA shows ā+i>e, ā+ă>o & ā+ṛ>ar which are cases of shortening of preceding a before sandhi. This type of change is not found with internal sandhi. They are found with sandhi of upasarga and verb and sandhi in compounds and in external sandhi. maheśaḥ, tada iha > tadeha, tada maha+rsih>maharsih.
e.g. mahāisaḥ> uyaca > tadoyaca,