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 I. PHONOLOGY. LENGTHENING AND Loss OF VOWELS. CONTRACTION. II 'hip'; anu-şák 'in continuous order', beside ánu- ‘along' as first member of a compound. d. The lengthening of the vowel in a certain number of instances appears to be due to analogy; thus the denominatives in -ayá beside -ayá from a-stems (e. g. rtayá- 'observe order', beside rtayá-)¹, seem to follow the model of those in -īyáti and -uyáti, which would account for the fluctuation in quantity. Tīkṣṇá- 'sharp' (beside tigmá- : tij- 'be sharp') and hálīkṣṇa- (TS.) beside halikṣṇa- (VS.), a kind of animal, appear to owe their 7 to the influence of desideratives which in several instances have 7 (partly for older i) before ks. The reason for the in tusnim 'silently' (tus- 'become quiet'), and in sümná- (VS.), otherwise sumná- 'favour', is, however, obscure. 18. Loss of vowels.-Vowels are very rarely dropped in the language of the Samhitas. Medial loss is almost entirely restricted to the isolated disappearance of a before and m. That vowel is dropped at the end of the first member of a compound in anvartitá (RV.) 'wooer' (= anu-vartitá); ánvartisye (AV.) ‘I shall follow'³; car-vadana- (AV. Paipp.) 'of lovely aspect (= cāru-vadana-) and cār-vāc- (AV. Paipp.) 'speaking pleasantly'4. The only example of the loss of a in this position seems to be til-píñja- (AV¹.) a kind of plant, beside tila-piñjí- (AV¹.). The vowel z is further dropped before the m of the I pers. pl. pres. ending of the 5th (-nu-) class, when the z is preceded by only one consonant, in krn-mahe and kṛṇ-mási (AV.)5 'we do'. Initial vowels also occasionally disappear. The only vowel that is lost with any frequency is a, which is dropped in Sandhi after e and o, according to the evidence of metre, in about one per cent of its occurrences in the RV. and about twenty per cent in the AV. and the metrical portions of the YV.6 In a few words its disappearance is prehistoric: in vi- birď7 (Lat. avi-), possibly in ni- 'in' (Greek äv), in pid- 'press', bhi-şáj-10 'healer'. ā is lost in tmán-, beside ä-tmán-, but the reason has not been satisfactorily explained". In va 'like', beside iva, the loss of i is probably only apparent: cp. va 'like' (Lat. vě 'or') ¹². Initial seems to be lost, if the reading is not z corrupt, in śmasi (RV. II. 31º) beside uśmási 'we desire' (Vvas-). I 2 19. Contraction.-Long vowels and diphthongs are often the result of contraction in Sandhi ¹3. They have frequently a similar origin in the interior of words ¹. a. Contractions of a with a vowel or diphthong are the following: I. a often stands for a + a, a+a, or a +a; e. g. áj-at, augmented imperfect (= á-aj-at); ád-a, red. perf. (= a-ád-a); bhárāti, pres. subj. (= bhára- ati); ukthá ¹5, inst. sing. (= ukthá-a); áśvas ‘mares', nom. pl. (= áśvā-as); dáti, aor. subj. (= dá-ati); devám, gen. pl. (= devá-ām). 2. e stands for a+i and a+i; e. g. ásve, loc. sing. (-ásva-i); padé, (at the end of a trişṭubh-line), without inter-| BERG, ZDMG. 44, 321 ff. (Der Abhinihita change of quantity, appears in sirdsu, loc. Sandhi im Rgveda). plur. of sira- 'stream'. Cp. 25, A 1; Wackernagel I, 71. I See below, Denominatives, 563, a. 8 Cp. SCHMIDT, KZ. 26, 24; WACKER- NAGEL 2¹, p. 73- 9 Op. cit. 2¹, p. 71 (bottom). 10 Op. cit. 2¹, p. 72 (bottom). ¹1 Op. cit. 1, p. 61 (top). 2 Apart from the syncopation of a in low grade syllables: cp. 25, A I. 3 Cp. BÖHTLINGK, ZDMG. 39, 533; 44, 492f.; cp. OLDENBERG 324. 4 See BÖHTLINGK's Lexicon s. v. Per- haps also in jāmbila- (MS.) ‘knee-pan', if jānu-vila-. 5 Cp. DELBRÜCK, AIV. 174; V. NEGELEIN, Zur Sprachgeschichte des Veda 60 (2- Wnrzeln). 6 Cp. WACKERNAGEL I, p. 324; OLDEN- = 12 Cp. op. cit. I, 53 c, note; ARNOLD, Vedic Metre, 129 (p. 78). 13 See below 69, 70. 14 See above 15, a 2. ¹5 The original inst. ending - under the influence of this contracted form became -ā; cp. Wackernagel I, p. 102, mid.