Sanskrit Language and Literature

(b) Thirty-six consonants, viz.: Five series of stops and nasals: guttural: k, k/i, g, gh, it; palatal: c, ch, j, jh, ii; cerebral: t, th, d, dh, 71,- dental: t, th, d, dh, n; labial: p, ph, b, bh, m. Four semi-vowels: y, r, 1, v. Three sibilants : palatal ,f, cerebral ..s, dental 5. Two aspirates: voiced h, unvoiced h (visarga). A nasal with loose closure of the lips M (anusvara), and another nasal 4c (anundsika) which probably was a simple nasalization of the vowel rather than a consonant proper.

Vowels.

The vowel-system was inherited practically un changed from the common Indo-Iranian period, the only specific Sanskrit development being the change of the Indo-Iranian short diphthongs *ai, *au (=Avestic ae, ao) to 5 (still classed as diphthongs by Indian grammarians) and of the long diphthongs *au to ai, au. Thus to Avestic daevo haomo uxbdisf gdui Sanskrit corresponds with clevcih somdh ukthciih gciuh. The com parative simplicity of the vowel-system and the great predomi nance of the vowels a and a were due to the fact that in the Indo Iranian period four distinct Indo-European sounds—e, o, a, (n, n, m)—had coalesced in the one sound a (similarly J, 5, a had all become a). The only trace left of the earlier differentiation was the fact that an original guttural before a representing older e had become a palatal : thus we have sdcate, "follows," from *sekwetai (Greek hepetai, Latin sequitur), but sdksat, "he shall follow" be side Gk. hepsetai. Similarly the 12 I.E. diphthongs—ei, oi, ai, eu, 014, au, ei, 5i, di, eu, du, au—were merged in four Skt. sounds "e, 6, az, au. In this way the vowel-alternation (especially between e and o), a characteristic feature. of Indo-European, was largely lost. Nevertheless, where the word contained a sonant the alternation, although diminished in scope, was still discernible: e.g., I.E. ei: oi: i became Skt. ë: i (e.g., Gk. leipei: loipos: glipe=Skt. recati: rekah: aricat), I.E. e, o: g, 5 became Skt. a: a. The correspon dences thus resulting—a: g: ai; u: 5: an; ar: dr—being associated with particular grammatical formations were still further developed in Sanskrit into a system, which, early recog nized by the Indian grammarians, was used by them in their description of the formation of the language.

Consonants.—The consonant-system has remained much truer to the original Indo-European. It is characterized by the rarity of spirants and by the opposition of unaspirated and aspirated stops (both surd and voiced) in each series. In preserving the voiced

aspirate stops unchanged, Sanskrit and its descendants (for most of the modern Indo-Aryan languages still possess these sounds) are unique among the Indo-European languages, in which these sounds either became surd aspirates and later spirants (as in Greek and Latin) or lost their aspiration (as in Iranian, Balto Slavonic, Armenian, Albanian, Germanic, Celtic). Thus to Greek phgro, Latin fero, Eng. bear, Sanskrit corresponds with bhdrdmi, to Gk. gtheke, Lat. fecit, Eng. deed with cidhat.

Some consonants were restricted in their use : ii appeared only before or after palatals, it only finally or before gutturals (and where a guttural had subsequently disappeared), to only between vowels and semi-vowels or before cerebral stops, h only finally or before sibilants and surd gutturals or labials, in only finally or before consonants. Neither aspirate nor h nor s ended a word. At the end of a sentence only the following consonants were used: k, t, t, p, n, n, m, Of the palatals ch appears as a single consonant only initially: elsewhere it is always doubled unless preceded by another con sonant, for it corresponds to the Indo-European group e.g., chinrldnti "they cut"=Latin scindunt, gdcchami "I go"=Greek bcisko, vaiichd "wish" = Germ. Wunsch. j represents two I.E. sounds (1 ) palatal (=Gk. g, Avestic z) : janah "birth"=Av, zanO, Gk. genos, Lat. genus; (2) velar gw before an original é or I (=Av. j) : jivdla "alive"=Av. jivo, Lat. vivos, cf. Gk. bios, Eng. quick. jh does not belong to the Indo-European part of the voca bulary, but appears only in onomatopoeic and borrowed words, or in words taken from the vernacular in which the frequent Sans krit groups dhy and lay became (j)jh.

Of the sibilants .§ corresponds to I.E. palatal in this Sanskrit agrees with the other eastern I.E. languages (Balto-Slavonic, Albanian, Armenian, Iranian) which have an s or sh sound as opposed to the k (h in Germanic) of the western languages: e.g., Seam "ioo"=Av. satem, Lithuanian .i'inttas, but Gk. he-katon, Lat. centum, Eng. hundred. Before the surd dentals this s be came s: vikiti "enters," vistcilz "entered." But s also corresponds to I.E. s when preceded by i, u, r or k, agreeing in this with Iranian and partly with Armenian and Balto-Slavonic.