Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/204

182 (3) একাৎ-ন.—How in the early Brāhmaṇa language this round-about and clumsy expression took the place of Vedic নব (nine, pronounced as ন-উ-অ) of the cardinal compounds নবদশ (nineteen) নববিংশতি (twenty-nine) and so forth to নবনবতি (ninety-nine), is not clear. The ear­liest Prākṛta has ঊন which may be formed by metathysis from ন-উ-অ; it is not likely that একাৎ-ন was reduced to ঊন. I think ঊন being un-orthodox, the new expression was coined, when নব fell into disuse, and ঊন was wrongly supposed to be something like একাৎ-ন because of its final ন.

(4) কর্ম্মার.—in Vedic it means the smith; কম্মার is the natural Prākṛta form of it, from which the vernacular কামার has come out. The purists, in ignorance of Vedic form polished the prākṛta form in analogy of other words, by adding কার indicating doing to কর্ম্ম, to form কর্ম্মকার.

(5) The word গ্না signified a married lady and a goddess in the early speech, and so who was not a গ্না, i.e., who was not lady-like was ন-গ্না; thus মহানগ্নী came to signify a বিশ্যা (viśya) or courtesan. The shamelessness of a courtesan gave the significance naked to the word. So by its derivation neither গ্না nor নগ্না was a feminine form of any masculine word; but not knowing the character of the word, the word নগ্ন was created as the original masculine form, even in the Brāhmaṇa literature. I must also note, that from the original meaning of the word গ্না, a married woman, the word নগ্না also came into use to signify an unmarried girl; in this meaning of the word the age of the girl could not be and cannot be read. The Vedic rule having come down by tradition, it was prescribed in the ideal form of marriage, that one who was not married to another, was to be taken as wife. The commentators, in the teeth of the fact that the ceremonials recorded in the Gṛhyasutras, relate to the marriage of girls of mature age,