Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/54

 It is convenient also in transliteration to distinguish the assimilated  by a special sign,, from the  of more independent origin,  and this method will be followed in the present work.

This is the whole system of sounds recognised by the written character; for certain other transitional sounds, more or less widely recognised in the theories of the Hindu phonetists, see below, 230.

The whole spoken alphabet, then, may be arranged in the following manner, in order to show, so far as is possible in a single scheme, the relations and important classifications of its various members:

The figures set under the characters give the average percentage of frequency of each sound, found by counting the number of times which it occurred in an aggregate of 10,000 sounds of continuous text, in ten different passages, of 1,000 sounds each, selected from different epochs of the literature: namely, two from the Rig-Veda, one from the Atharva-Veda, two from different Brāhmaṇas, and one each from the Manu, Bhagavad-Gītā, Çakuntalā, Hitopadeça, and Vāsa-vadattā (J.A.O.S., vol. X., p. cl).