Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/49

Rh terms borrowed by Sanskrit writers were not obtained from Alexander or his soldiers; and the influence of the Muhammadans was not felt till much later in the day. But it holds good in so far that there was evidently a vulgar speech and a polished one. The former has perished, except that much of it which Buddhism has preserved for us; the latter continued to be written long after it had ceased to be intelligible to the masses.

The second reason is a somewhat Darwinian one. There seems to exist among words, even as among living beings, a struggle for existence, terminating in the "survival of the fittest." It is clear from all that has hitherto been discovered in linguistic science that the progress of development of all languages is from the harsh and complicated to the smooth and simple. The words in ancient languages are cumbered with a mass of letters, sounds, and combinations, which in the course of ages wear away by use, leaving short simple words behind. Tenues slide into mediæ, gutturals soften into palatals, compound letters melt into simple ones, single consonants drop out of sight altogether, sometimes carrying with them adjacent vowels.

Now it is evident that a word which at first starting is well provided with plenty of good stout consonants and broad clear vowels has a better chance of surviving through the various processes of clipping, melting, and squeezing, which it is fated to undergo in its passage through the ages, than a word which starts ill provided and weak.

Such words as ovis, avis, we see at once, have no chance; deprived at an early period of their termination, as superfluous, they sink into ove, ave, and then into oë, aë, words too slight and weak for ordinary use. It is this cause which probably led to the survival of the hard, strong words in use among the sturdy peasantry, and of the diminutives in -culus and -cellus, which give a good working basis. Thus, we find from avicellus,