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90 been adopted in Bengali; these Sanskrit words again, are pronounced in the very fashion in which they were pronounced by the speakers of the ancient Prākṛta tongues; দুঃখ is pronounced as দুক্&zwnj;খ and নিঃশ্বাস as নিশ্-শাস্. Some of our Paṇḍits in their zeal and eagerness to give the Bengali language the sort of dignity which Æsop's jackdaw sought in the land of fables in dim backward of time, persuade us in vain to believe, that it is not মন but মনস্ which is the original word with us. They forget that we have borrowed মনোহর, মনস্তাপ, etc., in their entirety from what is called the Sanskrit language, and not that we have made euphonic combinations of মনস্ + হর etc., in our current speech, following the stringent Sandhi rule. The Sanskritists of the olden days borrowed মন্মথ ungrudg­ingly from a Prākṛta speech, and মনচোর is not found fault with, though চোর is a Sanskrit word; why should then our Paṇḍits shy at মন-কষ্ট or similar other forms in Bengali? Our natural sound has a history, and it cannot be obliterated. I may notice by the way (even though it is a digression) that in the Vedic speech we can notice a simple মন by the side of মনস্, as disclosed by such a term as আমনং signifying—having the mind or disposition to be friendly.

The nasal sound—The sound of the full-bodied final nasal is what may be represented by অনুস্বার; it is something like অ-ঙ্ in Bengali while it is অম্ in Sanskrit. In Telegu and Tamil there is an indigenous অম্ which is articulated as a final nasal at the end of all words, which are nouns. The Andhras and the Tamil people have not got the half-nasal ঁ in their script, and they do not also utter the sound involved by it; they have an abundance of 'am' and 'un' as terminal endings, but the half-nasal is altogether wanting. As the Mongolians are notorious for their excess of nasal sound, we cannot attribute the