Professor BiiHLER on the Sanskrit Linguals. 12.*> 



7r€p-v>iiju 11 1 sell." Its older form must have beenparn. The 

 noun banij or vanij \ a merchant' is without doubt a deri- 

 vative from this root formed by the affix ij, like ucij etc, 

 and its n likewise has been produced by a lost 1 r.' The 

 change of the initial ' p' to ' b' or 1 v' finds its analogies in 

 the present of the root pa, pibami or pivami for pipami and 

 the causal of sphay, sphavaya, sphapaya. 



But the lingualising influence of ' r' extends still further, 

 It causes also the change of dental mute letters into linguals. 

 This change most frequently takes place in the Prakrit dia- 

 lects of the dramas, in Pali, in the language of the Rock In- 

 scriptions and in the modern vernaculars. The rules, by 

 which it is regulated are : — 



1. ) Mute dentals are changed to the corresponding lin- 

 guals after ' ri,' and ri itself becomes a, i, e, or u. Skt. 

 krita=kata or kita, Skt. vriddha = vudha, talavrinta = tala- 

 venta. 



2. ) Mute dentals are changed to the corresponding lin- 

 guals if preceded by r immediately. In this case the ' r' 

 either may be assimilated to the following ling^l, or it may 

 be rejected, and in the latter case the preceding vowel may 

 be lengthened. Skt. vartate = vattate, bharta=bhatta, garda- 

 bhah=gaddaho, karta vya =kat a vy a , vardhay a=vadhane,m 

 vadha-vum. 



It has been frequently asserted that these and similar 

 changes are innovations introduced in the course of the de- 

 velopment of the Indian languages and that they are un- 

 known to the ancient mother-tongue. But in this, as in 

 many similar cases, it will be found on closer investigation, 

 that those laws which rule paramount in the secondary and 

 tertiary Indian languages, began to show their influence al- 

 ready in the most ancient forms of East- Aryan speech. 

 Firstly, the Yedic dialect contains a number of words, which 



