130 Hoernle — 'Essays on the Eaurian Languages. [No. 2, 
In these examples, sfiOR still forms a pleonastic genitive. But some 
places occur where the original genitive termination is altogether dropped, 
and instead is joined to the crude base, with which it forms a compound, 
and thus determines by itself the genitive ease, e. „ 
qcFspr ^siir u i. e. 
Skr. u-sjrfi ^rrs?: II or 
High Hindi : W vx 11 * 
Ditto, Act IV: 
Or : 15 % H >-/ e - 
Skr. TT5l^rav»H£lT*rei , *nr HJT: ^iwfa ii or 
High Hindi : TTsrrawdwuw dir u fwNl 7 ? sn^ft ^t^'jit ii 
° In these examples evidently, forms no more a pleonastic genitive, 
but itself determines the genitive case of the word with which it is com- 
pounded, in the place of the real original case affix. It has clearly not only 
lost its predicative meaning, but has become altogether a determinative ele- 
ment, or a sort of affix. 
But what was originally the meaning of this word and how did it 
come to lapse into the condition of a mere affix ? In order to answer this 
question, we must go back to the Sanskrit. In one place occurs 
instead of viz. : — 
rf^ jpi || i. e. 
Skr. ri? 11 or 
High Hindi : vx JTTft ^ fa ^ W WTT V ll 
The Sanskrit equivalent of qfa*ra is aWT* The noun tlssfa means 
< nature,’ that which distinguishes one from another. Hence, MSfa may mean, 
natural, peculiar, or own ; for what is peculiar to one, that is one’s own. 
The word therefore means own, and was originally inserted after the 
genitive to emphasize the possessive sense of the genitive. But in course of 
time, this original object of the insertion of ifa*r<«r was lost sight of, and it 
was used simply to express the genitive itself. In fact, it may be shown 
that the genitive in many other languages arose by some such process.f As 
* LitoraUy it is ’S^irPf I bat it is a vory common practico in Prakrit, of which 
numberless instances aro found in the plays, to add the affix to Sanskrit words 
without any effect upon tho sense of the latter (of. Pr. Prak. iv, 25, Com.). 
f A good illustration of the process is mentioned by Max Muller in his Lectures 
on the Science of Languages. In Lect. II, page 79, he quotes the following remarks from 
an American paper about the Negro-English. “As to Oases, I do not know that I ever 
heard a regular possessive, but they have begun to develope one of their own, which is 
a vory curious illustration of the way inflectional forms have probably grown up in 
other languages. If they wiBh to make the faot of possession at all emphatic or dis- 
tinct, they use the whole word “ own.” Thus they will say “ Mosey houso. But if 
asked whose house that is, the answer is “ Mosey own.” “ Co’ Molsy y own was the 
