101 
1872.] Hoemle — Essays on the Gaurian Languages. 
logy of tho Prakritic masc. nouns in % which will be explained present- 
ly). Again while the Manual declines, e. //., stotK chain, beloved 
in the gen. rsisftv: ^T, w€li ; Dadoba makes the gen. tariff ^y, 
^r, etc. — There remains still to consider the case of the & 'anskritic 
nouns in =!j (masc. and neuter). Their final is the resultant of the drop- 
ping, according to the Gaurian law, of the visarga and anuswara of the nom. 
sing, of the nouns in Sanskrit ; e. //., the Marathi (Sansfcritic) nouns 
are modifications of the Sanskrit nom. sing. 3«f. All (non- 
Sanskritic) Marathi nouns in belong to the Prakritic element, making 
an oblique form in ^ST, and their analogy is followed by the Sanslcritic 
nouns in ^ and also by such foreign nouns as really end in a consonant, 
but, according to the native grammatical fiction, are supposed to end in 
; e. g., as the Prakritic sin? heat (for Skr. ’EfTflh Prakrit sPiiT) ; milk 
(for Skr. -^rar, Pr. -^ir ) have in the gen. UnKl^f. ^sfT^T; so the Satiskri- 
tic God, etc., have and the foreign nouns fitjy fault, etc., have 
gen. 
Here the same interesting question arises which I have had occasion 
to touch upon when treating of the proper Gaurian nouns in in the 
Iiindi-class Gaurian languages. The problem there was to explain the 
reason, why, while all Prakrit nouns (having a base in ^f) end in the 
nom. sing, in %, in the Hindi-class Gaurian languages some of them 
modify % to and retain their Prakritic character in admitting an 
oblique form (in V or ^3 t), and others modify *5T to ^ and assume the 
proper Gaurian nature of not admitting an oblique form. A very similar 
phenomenon is exhibited by the Marathi. Here we have 1., Prakritic 
nouns in % as ^ milk, nrw heat, vra wing, vflsr sleep, bell, 
lip, etc. Their final vf has no doubt arisen by the same process as the 
final w of such words in Hindi (as explained above) ; viz., the original 
Prakrit termination T changed to '3, and this uJ afterwards become 
quiescent and thus, being omitted in writing, was substituted by 
These nouns form their oblique form in vjt. thus gen. =JTHT ^T, 
•ftwr ^T, etc. 2., Prakritic nouns in *5;T as iffST horse, ’gpirsTT good (in 
fact all adjectives in ^JT) which form their oblique form in ^T, thus gen. 
SPfir ^t, ’qr, etc. The final in this class of nouns has arisen, as in 
the Hindi-class Gaurian, by substituting the more agreeable long vowel 
for the harsher Prakrit diphthong In old Marathi and in the pronouns 
ilT, 5jT, etc., the original Prakrit diphthong % is still preserved (see Manual 
p. 47, rule 84, note).* The difference between these two classes is to be 
* According to tho Manual, p. 29, nouns in TttpyT and qui] do not change 
in the oblique cases. But this is wrong according to Dadoba’s gr ammar, where p. 
74, rule 207, the nouns in quiT are declined exactly as all other nouns in viz., making 
an oblique form in thus an, I P- 266, where from the examples of 
