Beh1cer''s Dig animated Text of Homer . 189 



comfortable than we were ten years ago. Then we had no hesitation 

 about connecting it with the Sk. yas^ yd, yat^ assuming a change of y 

 to the rough breathing, as in ^(rtaq (i. e. rpiuQT^ liver, Sk. yaJcrt (i. e. 

 yakart). But now, if we do not surrender this conviction, our faith 

 in it has become less full and sure. A Locrian inscription, published 

 by L. Ross in 1854, presents the form FOr/, with digamma, for ort. 

 A digammated form of the relative stem is also seen in a gloss of 

 Hesychius, quoted by Savelsberg : BaXiximi^g, crwicpij^og, X^rjie?, i. e. 

 for ^^ youthful eompanio?i'''' the Cretans use ^uXixidjTtjg (i. e. Tuhximtjg, 

 equivalent to -t^XiKHjixrig). To these testimonies, Savelsberg, in the ar- 

 ticle referred to, adds the indications of digamma in the Homeric 

 verse, and concludes that the Greek relative was F(5;, fi], F(5, or f(5?, 

 Fa', For. These he supposes to have been later forms of xfo?, xfoE, 

 xFor, Latin qui, quae, quod. He thus identifies again the Greek and 

 Latin relatives, though in a very difterent way from that of the old- 

 fashioned etymology, which held that the original h of the Greek 

 relative was in Latin hardened to a A'-sound {qu). The omission of 

 the ^-sound in the Greek vog Avould be something like that in the 

 Latin ubi^ unde^ for cuhi, cunde, which remain in the compounds 

 sicubi, alicunde. The stem kva, which would thus underlie the rela- 

 tives of these two languages, Savelsberg supposes to have been de- 

 veloped out of ka, the stem of the Sanskrit interrogative. He goes 

 yet further, and from the same origin derives even the Sanskrit rela- 

 tive : ya, he thinks, is for kya, and kya like kva is only an altered 

 form of ka. But Schleicher and Curtius are not yet prepared to 

 admit that the Greek relative-stem began with digamma, still less 

 that it was ever kva. The former touches on the subject in his Com- 

 pendium of Comparative Grammar, p. 180: the latter more at length 

 in his Principles of Greek Etymology, ii, 177-8. In respect to the 

 FOT/of the Locrian inscription, they say that when the digamma- 

 sound had nearly vanished from the Greek dialects, its sign was 

 sometimes used improperly by scribes or grammarians for other spi- 

 rants, and especially for the y, which had no sign of its own even in 

 the earliest Greek alphabet ; and they appeal to a Corcyraean in- 

 scription, which shows a genitive singular masculine of the first de- 

 clension in -AFO, where all analogy would lead us to expect -ayo or 

 -ahyo, Sk. asya. As regards the Homeric usage, they say that the 

 phenomena which seem to indicate digamma, could equally well be 

 produced by y. In this there is no intrinsic improbability, though 

 one would be glad to have the support of some parallel case which 

 we could look upon as clear and certain. The parallels which Cur- 

 tius brings forward are the verb ?£("«» to aim at, desire, and the root 



