IN the Introduction to his edition of the Āvaśyaka tales the late Professor Leumann wrote on p. 1 : “ Since-as may be easily understood—Jacobi, when he endeavoured to utilize the language and contents of the Jaina tales for Indology, started with the Uttarādhyayana Ṭikā, of Devendra which was in his possession, and since this author, belonging as he does to the period of decadence and therefore more familiar with Sanskrit, writes a rather doubtful Prakrit—therefore the editor was chiefly concerned with the establishing of a thoroughly reliable Prakrit text … that was to be suitable for clearing the way for a more correct judgment and utilization of medieval Jaina Prakrit.” The appearance of the first portion of Leumann's text was welcomed by Pischel in his Pkt grammar (§ 21) in the following terms: ” The most important text in JM is : Die Āvaśyaka-Erzählungen. Herausgegeben von Ernst Leumann. 1. Heft. Leipzig 1897. The absence of any commentary unfortunately renders the understanding rather difficult; some passages remain wholly obscure. But even these few forms show that from texts in JM we may yet expect much new and important material.”

WHILE I was in Isfahān at the end of June, 1932, a young of Yazd, came to see me before going on to his school in Shīrāz. We met four times, and before leaving he requested an acquaintance of his, a young man, Qobād, who was visiting Isfahān, to come to see me. Qobād's home was with his parents in Teheran, so that he had little opportunity to use this dialect. In August of the same year I was able to visit Yazd for one week, and there found a young school-teacher, Mehrabān born in the neighbouring village of Maryābād (or Mōriābād).

THIS question arises out of some remarks made by Professor Abdul Haq of the Osmaniya University, Hyderabad, Deccan, who, criticizing views on Khaṛī Bolī (=KB) which I had expressed in my Hist, of Urdu Lit., pp. 5, 8, 9, 13, said :—

hamẽ is se hūī ki ḍākṭar ṣāḥab ne is ko rafa‘ kīā hai, lekin aṣl mẽ yeh bhī mubtilā haī: khaṛī aur kharī kā farq inhõ ne bahut ṣaḥiḥ batāeā. hai, lekin ma‘ne taqrīban vohī rakkhe haī jo kharī ke haī, ya‘ne murawaja, ‘ām, mustanad (standard) zabān ; aur dūsrā gaẓab kīā hai ki Khaṛī Bolī ko ek zabān qarār dīā hai, aur us kī do batāī haī, ek Hindī aur dūsrī Urdū … Khaī Bolī ke ma‘ne Hindostān mẽ ‘ām par gãvārī bolī ke haī jise Hindostān kā, bacca bacca jāntā, hai; voh na koī khāṣ zabān hai, aur na zabān kī koī (Urdu, July, 1933, p. 590.)

There was a prevailing opinion in English linguistic literature that the modern prose Hindī, High Hindī, or Kharī bolī, was invented by the English.

This point of view was maintained some time ago by such a highly authoritative scholar as Sir G. A. Grierson. Thus, in the preface to his work on the history of Hindī literature he says : “ The first half of the nineteenth century … was the period of the birth of the Hindī language, invented by the English, and first used as a vehicle of literary prose composition in 1803 under Gilchrist‘s tuition, by Lallū Jī Lāl, the author of the Prem Sāgar.”

In the Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preussischen Adademie der Wissenschaften, Jahrgang, 1904, pp. 1136–7, K. F. Geldner published a transcription of a fragment of a Pahlavi-frahang found in Turfan and now preserved in the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin (registered as TM 195 (PI)). As some graphic peculiarities and especially the ligatures occurring in this fragment may be of particular interest for the history of the Pahlavi system of writing, I think it may be worth while to reproduce a photograph of it, obtained through the kind assistance of Dr. W. Henning and Dr. Gelpke, Berlin.

Tant que le dvandva n'est pas devenu, comme c'est le cas dans l'histoire de l'indien, un precédé de style, un mode d'abréviation qui finit par ne plus se distinguer d'un composé, il reflète certaines notions prégnantes d'une culture et d'un culte hérités. On n'a pas assez tenu compte des enseignements que donnent à ce point de vue les dvandvas avestiques, dont une liste (sujette à révision) a été dressée par Bartholomae, BB. x, pp. 267 sq. Et cependant il s'y conserve autant et même plus d'antiquités que dans ceux du védique.

Ilya eu un verbe indo-iranien pour désigner le labour: RV. imp. ; il s'y rattache des substantifs désignant le sillon: av. karša-, karši- f.; RV. sans doute ŚBr.

Par contre les noms Sanskrits de la charrue n'ont pas de correspondants connus dans l'lran.

L'un de ces noms, qui vit encore aujourd'hui, skr. hala-, n'est pas attesté avant Pānini. Est-il cependant plus ancien que le Sanskrit? On en a proposé plusieurs étymologies indo-européennes, dont malheureusement aucune ne s'impose (v. Walde-Pokorny, Vergl. Wb. der. Indog. Spr., i, p. 629; Scheftelowitz, ZII., ii, p. 278). Le Rgveda offre deux autres noms encore:

The “North-Western Prakrit” as Konow has called it is represented by the following documents.

(1) The two versions of Aśoka's edicts preserved at Mansehra’ and Shahbazgarhi. At this stage many of the characteristic features of the language have not yet developed, e.g. śr > ṣ, śv > śp.

(2) The later Kharoṣṭhi inscriptions, mostly short, collected by Konow in the second volume of the Corp. Inscr. Ind.

(3) The Kharoṣṭhi manuscript of the Dhammapada discovered near Khotan (Manuscript Dutreuil du Rhins).

(4) The Kharoṣṭhi documents from Niya, representing the administrative language of the Shan-Shan kingdom in the third century A.D. In the Journ. As., 1912, pp. 337 ff., J. Bloch examined the dialectical peculiarities of the Manuscript Dutreuil du Rhins and showed that they appeared in modern times in the languages of the North-West.

It is proposed here to offer some considerations on the representationof certain Malayalam 1 sounds. It is not the purpose of these notes to present a detailed laboratory account of the acoustic and physiological phenomena to be symbolized, but while characterizing these phenomena sufficiently for the reader to appreciate their general nature, rather to consider certain specific phonetic circumstances of their occurrence and the significance of these in the elaboration of anotational system.

Literature: Weber, Omina und Portenta (1858), p. 363; Naxatra, ii (1861), pp. 272, n., 393; Ind. Studien, v, 257, x,65; Haug, Sitzber. Bayer. Akad. Wiss., 1875, ii, 506; Zimmer, Ai. Leben, p. 353; Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii, 187; Bloomfield, J AOS., xiii, p. cxxxiv sqq.; AJPh., vii, 484 sqq.; Atharva Veda, p. 81;SBE., xlii, 532 sqq.; Whitney-Lauman, Atharva-Veda, pp. 377 sq.;Henry, La Magie dans I'lnde antique, pp. 68 sqq.; Oldenberg, RV Noten, i, 160; Caland, Ai. Zauberritual, pp. 16, n. 13; 175, n. 8;Papesso, Inni dell' Atharva-Veda, p. 127, n.

It is now generally admitted that a great deal of the ancient and medieval myth and legend enshrined in the Sanskrit epics and Purānas is of non-Aryan origin, and that even in Vedic mythology certain pre-Aryan elements are present. Puranic myths of the godsand legends of kings, heroes, and sages, in the form in which we find them in the Sanskrit works, represent undoubtedly a considerable amount of modification from their original forms, whether Aryan or non-Aryan: witness, e.g., the treatment of what would appear to bea genuine Aryan (? Indo-European) saga-that of Purūravas and Urvaśī, as we find it in the Rigveda and the Śatapatha Brāhmana, in the Visnu Purāna and in the subsequent Puranas.

In the late Åge Meyer Benedictsen's note-books from his visit to Persia and Kurdistan in the year 1901, which are now in my possession, due to the kindness of Mrs. Meyer Benedictsen, I find some unpublished Awromānī texts dictated to Meyer Benedictsen by [Abdu'l-Ghafúr, native of Awromān,1 viz. an unfinished tale, not accompanied by a translation, and the so-called “ BacmeisterscheSprachproben ”.

M.A. Meillet (MSL. Paris, t. ix, pp. 365–372) enseignait,—depuisil est revenu souvent sur la question et s'est toujours prononcé dans le même sens — que, È l'accusatif singulier des thÈmes en -o- du genre animé (masculin, féminin) et au nominatif-accusatif singulierdes thÈmes en -o- du genre inanimé (neutre), la nasale finale était enindo-européen, non pas -m comme on l'écrit généralement, mais bien -n(de même pour les thÈmes consonantiques masc.–fém.: arm. otn “pied”, comme tasn “dix” et les thÈmes en -i- et en -u-).

Die folgende Untersuchung ist aus der Arbeit an Band ii, 2, von J. Wackernagels Altindischer Grammatik hervorgewachsen, der die nominale Ableitung behandelt. Das Material ist gewonnen aus dem Konträrindex in Grassmanns Wörterbuch zum Rigveda, aus Whitneys,, Index verborum zum AV.

A Sanskritist who reads for the first time a Buddhistic Sanskrit text such as the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka is struck at once by peculiarities of vocabulary and style which differentiate it from normal Sanskrit. If he limits himself to the prose parts, ignoring the verses, he will rarely encounter forms or expressions which are definitely ungrammatical, or at least more ungrammatical than, say, the Sanskrit of the epics, which also violates the strict rules of Pāṇini. Yet every paragraph will contain words and turns of expression which, while formally unobjectionable (if, perhaps, non-Pāṇinean), would never be used by any non-Buddhist writer.

For 300 years after Vasco da Gama touched Calicut generations of traders, merchants, missionaries, soldiers, and other emissaries from at least five different nations of Europe took their turn in India, pursuing their interests at a respectful distance, making no obtrusive efforts to scrape acquaintance with Sanskrit culture. Such advances were socially difficult, and would not have been welcomed. Moreover, our early associations were with Dravidian India, and very few cultured Brahmins sought membership of Christian Churches.

Das Wort kommt im Frahang ī Pahl., iv, 2, in der auf die Getreidearten Weizen, Gerste, Hirse folgenden Reihe der Hülsenfrüclite vor: . Seine Lesung, Herkunft und Bedeutung sind aber bisher nicht festgestellt. Das Pahl.-Pazand Gloss, von Jamaspji Asa-Haug bietet vînûk mit der unrichtigen Bedeutungsangabe “a seed, grain for agricultural purposes”. Sie beruht auf der irrigen Annahme Anquetils (vgl. auch Justi, Bund., p. 267 3), dass im Frahang das Wort (alles falsche Schreibungen für ═ aram. “Samenkorn”) noch als Erklärung zu dem vorhergehenden gehört. Die traditionelle Aussprache von ist vīnag, vīnūg, vīnū, vīnī (Junker, Frahang 115 sub ). Um dasselbe Wort handelt es sich natürlich in der Stelle Gr. Bund. 117, 2 f., wo in der Klasse der Getreidepflanzen nach (Weizen), (Gerste) und (nicht Reis, sondern statt Hirse : Frah. i¯ PH., iv, 1; Bund., ed. Justi 64,17 , vgl.WZKM, 26, 1912, 300) noch aufgezählt werden:

Dass das Singhalesische unter die “Modern Indo-Aryan Vernaculars” einzureihen ist, wird heute wohl von niemand mehr ernstlich bestritten. Irn Linguistic Survey of India, i, 1, p. 145, ist diese Tatsache auch von dem Grossmeister der indischen Sprachenkunde, Sir George A. Grierson, anerkannt worden, obwohl in dem Werke selbst das Singhalesische keine Berücksichtigung finden konnte. Möge es mir gestattet sein, einige ganz bescheidene Nachträge zu meiner vor nunmehr 38 Jahren erschienenen Etymologie des Singhalesischen, die den Ausgangspunkt und die Grundlage für meine Studien über diese Sprache bildete, dem allverehrten Jubilar zur Feier seines 85. Geburtstages in aufrichtiger Dankbarkeit zuzueignen.

The pronunciation of a coming after certain initial consonants as e, is the most important of the vowel changes met with in the Indo-Aryan loanwords of Malayāḷam, and also perhaps the most interesting from a phonological point of view.

The first to note and record the change was Gundert. He observed that a occurring after the voiced sounds g, j, d, d, y, and r is heard as e in the pronunciation of the Malayāḷis (A Grammar of the Malayalam Language, 2nd ed., p. 8). Gundert's observation is obviously imperfect inasmuch as the change is regularly manifested after b and l also, over and above the sounds specified by him.

Investigation of Middle Indian morphology from the strictly linguistic point of view can fairly be said to have been made thus far only by Jules Bloch, notably in his L'Indo-aryen du Véda aux temps modernes (Paris, 1934). However valuable as descriptive grammars and as collections of material the Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen of Richard Pischel (Strasbourg, 1900) and the Pāli Literatur und Sprache of Wilhelm Geiger (Strasbourg, 1916) undoubtedly are, both works are far from linguistic in purpose. In Bloch's masterly survey of the history of Indian linguistic development from Vedic through Sanskrit and Middle Indian to Modern Indian, on the other hand, embracing phonology, morphology, and sentence-structure, it was scarcely possible, in view of the mass of material, for him todiscuss every detail. It is my purpose, then, as a comparative linguist, to consider in the following pages certain phenomena in Middle Indian which seem to merit further study, omitting on principle all that appears already to have been satisfactorily explained, such as the pronouns (cf. Bloch, pp. 145–7). Speaking in very general terms, Middle Indian would seem to present a mixture of forms common to Vedic and Sanskrit, number of survivals to be paralleled only in Vedic or Iranian, and a considerable amount of contamination of formations whose functions were, at least approximately, identical.