1873.] 
59 
Essays in aid of a Comparative Grammar of the Gaurian Languages.—Eg 
Key. A. F. Redole Hoern'le, D. Eh. Tubingen , Erofessor of San¬ 
scrit , Jay Ndrayan's College , Benares. 
(Continued from Journal for 1872, Pt. I, p. 174.) 
Essay IY. 
On the Inflexional hase. 
In the third essay I attempted to collect all the facts and phenomena 
presented hy the various Gaurian languages in regard to their inflexional 
base. These facts were analysed and some general principles deduced from 
them. Two of these general principles require a more special consideration ; 
and this will be the subject of the present essay. It has been shown in the 
3rd essay, that the inflexional base may (under certain circumstances) 
assume a two-fold form ; viz. a direct form and an oblique form. One of 
the two general principles is closely connected with the direct form, the other 
with the oblique form. 
One result of the previous enquiry has been to show that the inflexional 
bases of the Gaurian languages are divided into two great classes according 
as they admit or do not admit an oblique form , and accordingly they were 
divided into 1., the Prakritic, and 2., the Gaurian (including Gaurian proper 
and Sanskritic) nouns, i. e., into those which have retained traces of the 
Prakrit organic declension, and those which have emancipated themselves of it 
altogether. This conclusion, however, was mainly dependent upon the truth 
of the identity of the oblique form with the organic genitive of the Erdhrit. 
This principle I shall try to establish now. 
Another result of the previous enquiry has been to show that while 
some inflexional bases retain in their direct form the original Prakrit 
termination i*T, others reduce it to or This difference was explained 
by the theory that the former are derived from a particular Prakrit base 
ending in (or while the latter are derived from the general base in 
The truth of this principle will be the second point I shall endeavour to 
establish. But the facts upon which the proof of both, this and the other 
principle, depends, are so closely intertwined, that it will not be possible to 
keep both enquiries altogether distinct. 
It is a well known fact, that in Sanskrit the genitive is not uncommonly 
substituted for the dative, though it possesses an organic dative ; (cf. Panini 
2, 3. 5., M. Williams’s Sanskrit Grammar §, 816, A. p. 353). In Prakrit this 
rule lias become absolute (see Cowell’s Prakrit Prakasa VI. 64.) ; and 
necessarily so; for it has lost the organic dative altogether; and not 
possessing one, it is obliged either to paraphrase it (by postpositions, e. g v 
