Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/294

272 Most convincing proof of র coming out of স (or from a vowel sound representing স) is to be sought in the phonetic peculiarity which is almost universal: change of 's' into 'r' as a Dravidian peculiarity, has been elaborately noticed by Bishop Caldwell and others and this very peculiarity in all the Aryan languages of Europe has been well studied by the Philologists. How the 's' of the genitive-indicating স্য of the Aryan speech has been reduced to 'r' in a very large number of cases in Italian, French, German and English, is too well known to scholars to require an illustrative statement. Thus in accordance with the universally prevalent phonetic law, and quite consistently with the actual idiomatic use of the old times, we get the history of the growth of our genitive-signifying suffix র. What is to be noted is that in tracing this history one is not forced to create an imaginary condition of things, disregarding the actual idiomatic use which has always been in force.

Having given the real history of র, I just refer to an untenable theory regarding it upheld by some learned scholars. On the flimsy basis of a form which cannot be shown to have been idiomatic in the Prākṛtas, 'কের' has been set up by some as the progenitor of র; only one solitary instance of very doubtful import is cited from the মৃচ্ছকটিক in support of the existence of the form কের, by wholly overlooking the clear cases of the use of genitive in the Prākṛtas. It is clear that the form কের has been specially favoured, by the scholars under review, as an explanation, regarding the form 'এর' has been needed; it should be seen, in the first place, that in Western Hindi and in Oriya, it is 'র' and not 'এর্' which is the suffix; in Oriya 'এর্' is wholly unknown and the Hindi forms হামারা, তোমারা, etc., point simply to a simple 'র' suffix. I proceed to show in the second place that এর্ is merely