39 
1874.] A. F. Rudolf Hoernle— Essays on the Gaurian Languages . 
is or or ; the latter becomes in Gaurian 
or ^rTefjT (originally ^T^rnrb which is the present oblique form of As 
noticed already, the medial ^ before the ^ has a neutral sound, and hence 
the spelling varies ; sometimes it is written, sometimes it is suppressed. As 
will be shown afterwards, Marathi possesses also some other masculine nouns 
in ^ which have an oblique form in ^T, which, however, are derived from 
Prakrit originals in ; and thus they differ from the masculine 
nouns of which we are treating here, whose oblique form ends in ^t, and 
which are derived from Prakrit originals in There is a further class 
of Marathi masculine nouns in ^ which have no oblique form at all. Now 
since the reduction of the Gaurian termination % (for Prakrit to ^ is 
an altogether Gaurian one , while the contraction of the Prakrit termination 
^3% to is partly Prakritic,f I think, we may conclude that all Marathi 
masculine nouns in which do not admit an oblique form, are derived from 
Prakrit nouns in (or original Gaurian nouns in %), and not from 
Prakrit nouns in 
T ^ 
The oblique form of the Gaurian nouns in (ijy or ^f) ends either in 
or in or in Y. The termination ^TT of the oblique form is common to 
the Gujarati, Naipali, and among Low-Hindi dialects, to the Ganwari and 
Marwari. The termination is peculiar to Marathi; and the termination 
^ to Sindhi, Panjabi, High-Hindl, and most Low-Hindi dialects of the Braj 
Bhasha class. E. g., ifKTT or horse has in Gujarati in Mar. 
^T, in Hindi %% ^TT- The origin of these oblique forms has been 
fully discussed in Essay IV. Whatever has been said about the neuter 
oblique forms in ^T, and *r, applies of course, equally to the masculine 
oblique forms; viz., that they are derived from the Prakrit genitive of a 
base in ^=JT, ending in ; so, however, that the oblique form in is. 
derived from the Prakrit genitive termination by means of sandhi and 
the oblique forms in ‘SJT and ^ (the latter being a mere modification of the 
former) by means of the insertion of the euphonic semivowel ^. (See note 
on page 56.) I have, however, to add as a further argument, which 
escaped my attention there, in support of the theory that the High Hindi 
termination Y is merely a phonetic modification of the Marathi termination 
^T, the fact, that in Marathi itself adjectives have a two-fokl form of the 
* In this case the ^ of the Gaurian form might also be merely a phonetic modifica¬ 
tion of the f{ in the Prakrit ; just as Gaurian cpn^ prince for Prakrit fGTTTT. 
f There are a few isolated traces of the contraction of the termination ^3% to 37, 
in Prakrit already; as for i for ^^3% » see note 5 to Essa J 
IY, p. 105. 
X Such proper Gaurian (not Pralcritic) nouns in ^ are more common in poetry ; 
e. g., <-y (for friend, in Chand’s verse : 
irT fW II XXVIII, 63, 
