Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 3.djvu/42

 STRUCTURE OF VERBAL STEMS.

been preserved by bards. It is much to be wished that we had more of Hemachandra's works accessible, as in them we should doubtless find a rich mine of such words. Thus for all past tenses there is the participial form in $ for all three persons, as

It has a plural in "3JT or ^ry, as :

TrfT*n = Trfw: ^3f|:*rr=^f?q?!T:

Sometimes also the u of the singular is rejected and a sub- stituted, as "HfliT^f = *?f*JTrf. There are other forms to be found in these poems which will bo referred to hereafter when the modern forms which they illustrate are under discussion.

As a general result from the preceding brief sketches it may be asserted that Sanskrit, Pali, and the Prakrits taken collectively as the languages of the earlier stage have a common structure, though in different grades. Sanskrit, with its full range of synthetical tenses, yet admits here and there analytical con- structions. Pali does the same, though its synthetical ten are fewer and simpler. The Prakrits reduce the tenses still further, and make greater use of participial constructions. The treatment of the root-syllable also shows a gradually increasing tendency to simplification, for whereas in Sanskrit it is changed in form repeatedly in the various tenses, a practice begins in Pali and grows more common as we go down the stream, of using in all parts of the verb that form of the root which is found in the Sanskrit present.

om the review of these languages given above the passive and causal have been purposely I, because the parts which

they play in the development of the modern verb are peculiar,