Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/53

 a final is treated (208–9) as if it were  (its historically older form); and also in a small number of specified words. They also mention the doctrine of nasal vowel instead of as held by some (and TPr. is uncertain and inconsistent in its choice between the one and the other).

In Pāṇini, finally, the prevailing doctrine is that of everywhere; and it is even allowed in many cases where the Prātiçākhyas prescribe only a nasal mute. But a nasal semivowel is also allowed instead before a semivowel, and a nasal vowel is allowed in the cases (mentioned above) where some of the Prātiçākhyas require it by exception.

It is evidently a fair question whether this discordance and uncertainty of the Hindu phonetists is owing to a real difference of utterance in different classes of cases and in different localities, or whether to a different scholastic analysis of what is really everywhere the same utterance. If is a nasal element following the vowel, it cannot well be any thing but either a prolongation of the same vowel-sound with nasality added, or a nasalized bit of neutral-vowel sound (in the latter case, however, the altering influence of an  or -vowel on a following  ought to be prevented, which is not the case: see 183).

The assimilated nasal element, whether viewed as nasalized vowel, nasal semivowel, or independent, has the value of something added, in making a heavy syllable, or length by position (79).

The Prātiçākhyas (VPr., RPr.) give determinations of the quantity of the combining with a short and with a long vowel respectively to make a long syllable.

Two different signs, ं and ँ, are found in the manuscripts, indicating the nasal sound here treated of. Usually they are written above the syllable, and there they seem most naturally to imply a nasal affection of the vowel of the syllable, a nasal vowel. Hence some texts (Sāma- and Yajur-Vedas), when they mean a real, bring one of the signs down into the ordinary consonant-place; but the usage is not general. As between the two signs, some manuscripts employ, or tend to employ, the ँ where a nasalized vowel is to be recognized, and elsewhere the ं; and this distinction is consistently observed in many European printed texts; and the former is called the  sign: but the two are doubtless originally and properly equivalent.

It is a very common custom of the manuscripts to write the -sign for any nasal following the vowel of a syllable, either before another consonant or as final (not before a vowel), without any reference to whether it is to be pronounced as nasal mute, nasal semivowel, or. Some printed texts follow this slovenly and undesirable habit; but most write a nasal mute whenever it is to be pronounced — excepting where it is an assimilated (213).