1916.] Bardic and Histl. Survey of Rajputana. 77 



which otherwise show a tendency to write ya, va for i, u— 

 should only in this particular case make an exception and 

 write at, an instead of ay a, ava. 



In connection with the general law formulated above, it 

 is further to be noted that e, o are not the resultants of ai % aii 

 only. Old Western RajasthanI aya and ahi can also contract 

 into e, and so can ahu into d. All examples of the first case 

 are Sanskrit or Prakrta words. Take the few illustrations fol- 

 lowing : It ' * victory " < *&, ^H ■ ' both ' ' < ^v% ^ < « elephant ■ ■ 



< to, Hm " sky ' ' < jhto, *)sf*r* " golden ' ' < ^t^, v " fear ' ' 



< to, 3j% " wordly destruction " <3T*re, %"^ " horse " < ^rk, 



^"ii^f " elephant " < TO*fi^r, xr*r " mountain ,f < ^s^ . Here, in 



all probability, the passing of aya into e was effected through 

 an intermediate step at. The fact that in the manuscripts there 

 seem to be no instances of any a'i written for aya in similar 

 cases, does in no way infirm the above explanation, but is 

 easily accounted for by the remark that all words in which aya 

 occurs, are tatsamas, 1 and therefore they continued to be 

 written according to the traditional spelling. 



The passing of ahi to e was also effected through ai, h being 

 thrown back before the foregoing syllable, according to the 

 well-known metathetical tendency of the Old Western Raia- 



sthanl (" Notes," § 51). Thus Old Western RajasthanI 

 passed into GujaratI and Maravari *%^ through fehe inter- 

 mediate form * JHTT^ra • The same happened with regard to 

 the ahi of Persian and Arabic words, and srf%t * poison M was 



turned into 5T%*:, and qf^K "city" (for sj^rj into *%*: . 

 Other illustrations of this change are the two following : 



Mar. ^r M wave" < 0. W. Raj. w^fk, *nrft, 

 Mar. S%*P* "dresses " < O. W. Raj. irfTO?? . 



Quite analogously to the above, ahu has passed into o, 

 through metathesis of h and consequent coming into hiatus of 

 the two vowels. Examples are : 



Mar. v^r "watch of the day"< 0. W. Raj. i?ST, 1ST, 



Mar. ^sftaft " small "< 0. W. Raj. 9S?*, 

 Mar. *?H "golden coin " < Ap. hwk 9 U&K . 



Turning now to consider the e 9 6 sounds, we find that 

 b also aro not the resultants of Old Western Raiasthani 



1 The term tatsama is used here in a wider sense than it is commonly- 

 understood. From the Old Western RajasthanI point of view, not only- 

 Sanskrit words, but Prakrta words also can be styled as iatsamas. 



