282 G. A. Grierson— On the Kagmirt Vowel-System. [No. 3, 
The history of these modified sounds is evident enough. It will 
suffice to take u-mat7v@ as an example. The Skr. @a: krtah, done, 
became in Apabhramea Prakrit af<y kariv, from which was derived 
the old Kacmiri @& karu. By epenthesis, of which the Kacmiri is 
extremely fond, this became pronounced @ gq kauwr whence we get the 
modern pronunciation ‘core. The old spelling was, however, retained, 
but the mark of wiréma was added to show that the final uw was 
silent. So also afc kari, represents an Apabhramea *afte karii and 
ae kar® represents an Apabhramea, *afest karid or att kart. It can 
easily be shown that a-matra represents an older 7, not an older w. 
Words in w#-mdatra are nearly all feminine forms of masculines in 
w-mairad, a fact which explains the adoption of the long #% sign as a 
substitute for the long 2. 
Sometimes by the addition of suffixes these md@trd-vowels cease to 
be at the end of a word. If the suffix consists of a single consonant, 
they are then fully pronounced (still, however, modifying the preceding 
vowel) and the sign of virama is omitted. In this case, #-md@tra@ takes 
the sound of a short German %. Thus, if we add the suffix x, meaning 
‘by him,’ to the above words, we get from afc kart, acer karin 
(pronounced something like kyrin); from ae karv, ata karun 
(pronounced something like korwn); and from RE kar®, REAL karun, 
(pronounced something like kiiriin).1 If, however, the suffix consists of 
a consonant and a vowel, or more, the mdtra@ vowels remain unpro- 
nounced. Thus, take the suffix w*, by you. Adding this to are kar? 
we get afc kar'wt, (pr. kyrw%); to ax kar", we get awa karéwt 
(korw*); and to RE kar®, we get RET (kiivwt). Again, adding the suffix, 
‘ tha-s, by thee I (was made), we get ARES. kar“thas (korthas), masc. 
and REY kiirthas, fem. 
The effect of these mute or mé@tra@ vowels upon pronunciation of 
preceding vowels, forms the main subject of this paper. 
Before dealing with them, it will be convenient to glance at 
the Kacmiri consonantal system. This is, in the main, the same as 
that which we meet in the Dévanagari Alphabets. It must be observed. 
however, that Kacmiri, has no soft aspirates (gh, jh, dh, dh, and bh), 
The letter jh becomes z. Thus from Apabhramca FAs, bugzhai, we have - 
the Kacmiri af bdz:, he willhear. The other letters simply lose their 
aspiration, e.g., Hindi ,/ ghér, surround, but Kacmiri gér, and so on. 
Kagmiri has developed a new set of palatals, viz., ¥ Band &, 
1 It must be clearly understood that these spellings do not do more than 
approximately indicate the pronunciation of these words. The exact pronunciation 
will be dealt with later on. 
