Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/128



The term akṣara (literally "undying," i.e., the ever-living and essential factor in human speech) signifies a letter as well as a syllable in the Vedic and so also in the later Sanskrit language. Different sounds of letters coalescing themselves in euphonic combination, and consonants unvitalized by vowel sounds, being joined to other consonants, generate compound letters; these compound letters, as well as the simple letters, being so many independent syllables in a word, must be separately pronounced. No doubt, in this method of pronunciation, we find the Vedic in agreement with the Sanskrit speech, but we have to notice that in the matter of accent, Vedic language differs very widely and radi­cally from Sanskrit. In the Vedic language, the vowel sounds were not so very rigidly and unalterably fixed as long or short, as they are in Sanskrit; though, no doubt, a definite value is found assigned to each and every vowel, we can clearly see, on reference to the pada-pāṭha system, that the accentual stress of উদাত্ত, স্বরিৎ, and অনুদাত্ত, change what may be called the normal sounds of the vowels.

We have to first notice, that the final vowel of many flexional endings and of several adverbs, is given by the text, sometimes as short, sometimes as long. We have to notice next in the Vedic accent system, that not only the syllables, the words, and the phrases, but even many sentences are found accented. This fact, which discloses