On the Eighth Verb-ChTiss in Sanskrit. 3 



resting on no ^^roofs ; and the Hindu system was reproduced 

 by them, either absolutely (as by Muller, Williams, Wester- 

 gaard, Kielhorn, etc.), or modified in such a way that the tan- 

 class, always with the suffix -//, was arranged as a sub-class 

 under the i-//-class (by Whitney and Karlez). 



It is really outside of the pale of the Sanskrit grammarians 

 that some attempts Iiave been made to prove by the facts of 

 the language and of comparative philology the identity, in 

 the main at least, of the two classes in question. Brugman 

 in his above-named article. Die achte conjngations-classe des 

 altindiscJien etc., assumes without farther argument, and as a 

 generally admitted fact, that the /rt/z-verbs terminating in -n 

 have received that nasal by artificial transfer from the suffix, 

 and turns the force of his argument on the verbs in -an, which 

 he considers as forming their present system by the suffix -no 

 {nu), before which an is weakened to a (through n), according 

 to his well-known theory of a nasal vowel. As for kar, he 

 refers it, as irregular, to the second class (its root-formation 

 being yet discernible in knr-vds, kur-nids, while kar6-7)ii, etc., 

 are formed after the analogy of kiirn-thd{s), whose second u, 

 however, is a mere phonetic addition, not a suffix). 



Quite a different theory was put forth by Van den Gheyn 

 in an article on the verbs of the Eighth class, published in 

 Bulletins de V Acade'mie royale de Belgiqnc (L., 1880), and 

 further supported by two new articles in the same publication 

 (VII., 1884, and XL, 1886). Van den Gheyn endeavors to 

 show in these articles by the facts of Sanskrit, and of cog- 

 nate languages as well, that the final nasal of the /^/^-verbs is 

 not original, but a later accretion, a transfer from the present- 

 sign to the root, and that these verbs properly belong to the 

 Sixth or i-//-class. As for kar, he adopts the hypothesis of 

 Harlez, who considers knrto be the ^ thhne principaV of the 

 verb (cf. knrmi, epic, kurvas, knrmas), and attributes its later 

 changes to analogy. As already noticed, Benfey had before 

 suggested the theory of ta instead of tan-xooX.'s,, and Gustav 

 Meyer had likewise pointed out the analogy of forms like 

 ta-td: Ta-TC9, re-ra-Ku, etc., in support of his hypothesis that 



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