epoch the eastern parts of India were, as far as we know, comparatively sparsely peopled by men of Aryan race. A phonetic change, therefore, of the character we are now discussing, would naturally be in accordance with the tendencies and peculiarities of the western tribes who then constituted the immense majority of the Aryans. § 48. The forms of the oblique are not, however, the only traces which still survive of the old Sanskrit inflections. Simplest of all of these, the locative, which ended in , has held its own down to the present day in many languages. In the Oriya poems this locative exists, as पुरे “ in the village,” गोपे "in Gop," though it has now been superseded by the analytical locative formed by रे, and modern Oriya uses गोप रे or गोप ठारे; in the latter of these = &. ' "in anger,” “in In Bengali it still survives, as in fear," "in a chariot." Here also, as in Oriya, the tendency to an analytical construction led at an early date to the addition of the particle, so that in Kasi Dâs's Mahabharat forms îâ â, tâ â, occur, although pleonastic, and often more with the sense of an ablative. After nouns ending in long â, this ending takes phonetically the form of य, as घोडाय “ in a horse;" but after nouns in other vowels, the modern termination is more usual. Hindi does not know this locative form: having adopted e as the oblique ending for the only class of nouns in which it admits a separate oblique form, there was no room in its system for the special locative. Gujarati regularly retains it in all cases, with complete disregard of phonetic combinations, so that it is added to nouns ending in a vowel quite as freely as to those which end in a consonant. Thus we have “in a custom,” तम्बुए "in a tent;" but in nouns of the masc. o-class, in which the oblique differs from the nom., the change of termination is possible, and they consequently write “in a day." So also in the plural, which universally terminates in o, the e of the locative is added, giving oë, no account being taken of the fact that the locative of the plural in Sanskrit ends in g. एषु. This is the way with the modern languages. Having got into their heads the idea that a certain termination is typical of a certain case, they stick it on to their nouns all round, overriding the more intricate distinctions of the older languages, and thus gaining in simplicity and regularity. Marathi has a locative in, universally employed in the. older poets, but now going by degrees out of use. The form is the same for both singular and plural, and appears to have arisen from the Pr. locative in af, which in Bhagavatî appears as fa, or as Weber reads it if. The later form was probably if, which, by rejection of the a, is, strictly speaking, a portion of the stem, and throwing forward the anuswâra, becomes f. Marathi has by degrees got rid of the , as in the similarly constructed forms of the oblique, and the lengthening of the final vowel is the usual Marathi custom. It agrees in practice with Gujarati, in using the singular form for the plural also. This may be pointed out as another instance of the preference of the Prakrits and modern languages for the older or pronominal declension, as this termination comes ultimately from forms like सर्वस्मिन् . 1 Panjabi resembles Marathi in having a locative in, which, however, is not restricted to the plural, and is not of very general use; thus, "in houses," "in hands." In the singular, a locative in is occasionally found, as ati; घरों; but this is more strictly an ablative, and I suspect we have here, not a relic of a synthetical case, but an abraded particle, as will be explained in another place. 1 The corrupt Konkani of Goa uses a locative in, as af" on the bank," from 13, Skr. AZ, where classical M. would have . (Burnell's Specimens of S. Indian Dialects, Mangalore, 1872.) This is probably only a shortening of the Skr. locative in T. In Sindhi there is a locative, but only in nouns of the u-class (=mute a). It ends in i, shortened probably from the Skr. e, as in, and not, as Trumpp writes, identical with the locative termination i, because this latter is not used in the declension of nouns of the a-stem, from which the Sindhi u-stems descend. Moreover, the declensional forms of the a-stem have to so great an extent swallowed up those of all the other stems, that we are hardly justified in looking to any forms but those of the a-stem, unless it be the old pronominal forms of words like . Besides the locative, several of the languages have also a relic of the old synthetical instrumental. This case in Skr. ended in the a-stem in ena; and Marathi retains this form shortened into , as "by a weapon," "by a house." Inasmuch, however, as this termination is identical with that of the nom. pl. of neuter nouns, it has become customary to use a pleonastic construction by the addition of one of the modern particles करून “by means of,” so that they would now write शस्त्रे करून "by means of a weapon." Here, in consequence of the backwardness of Marathi, we are enabled to see in force a process which has occurred in the other languages also at a former time, namely, the gradual wearing away of the synthetical case-ending, and the consequent necessity for employing a particle to bring out the meaning more clearly. Old-Bengali possessed also an instrumental ending in e, probably arising from the rejection of the na of ena. This ending being identical with that of the locative, was abandoned by degrees in favour of an analytical construction with particles, though it is even now occasionally used in colloquial language. Instances from Bidyâpati, the oldest Bengal poet (born A.D. 1433, died 1485), are as follows: जो प्रेमे कुलवति कुलटा होइ “ that a virtuous woman becomes unchaste through love."-Padakalpataru, 980. मने किछु ना गनलु ओ रसे भोल “in my mind I nothing counted, being foolish through that love."-Pad. 982. “love has adorned his bow with lamp-black." - Pad. 80. निज नवदले करि आसन दान “having made itself a seat by means of its own new leaves."-Pad. 1450. Kabi Kankan (A.D. 1544) also uses this case frequently, as fà es mai सबे करे लाजे "from without all hung down their heads through shame."-Chandi, 149.1 In the same way it is used in many later poets, so that the existence of the form is well established, though it has been banished from the modern literary style. Gujarati retains this form of the instrumental in ordinary use, though it, like M. and B., has felt it necessary to have recourse to separate particles to define the meaning more fully. In this latter case, it is, as usual, pleonastic, having, besides the simple form देवे “by a god,” also the forms देवे करोने and देवे थी, as well as . With its usual disregard of the hiatus, Gujarati adds this e to the final vowel of nouns ending in i and u, also to the plural in o, as shown by the examples given in § 41. No traces of a separate instrumental remain in H. or P., though Chand in Gâthâ passages uses the Skr. forms, as stated above. Sindhi is the only language which possesses a synthetic ablative, as "country," abl. g, with variant forms, 38, tere, te. All these clearly proceed from the Sanskrit डेव्हं, डेहाउ, abl. in आत्, as देशात्, which in Pr. becomes first आदो or आदु, then, and in Apabhranśa also . The variant forms merely testify to the unsettled state of this rude language, in which, from lack of literary cultivation, dialectic forms abound. It would seem that while the most correct form is 3, the most used isgi, and the anunâsika appears to be nothing more than a modern inorganic addition, such as Sindhi is fond of. The first of the two nasals in is also anunâsika, and is merely the Sindhi method of softening a hiatus. Inasmuch as this form is purely synthetic, and not a mere case-particle, it naturally takes the place of the final vowel of the nom.; if it were a case-particle, it would not do so, but would simply be 1 This is the page of the Calcutta ed. by Gopal Chandra Chakravarti, 1278, B.Ś. (1871). VOL. II. 15 appended to the oblique form. The form of the nom. represents the nom. of Prakrit and Sanskrit. Thus is the modern form of Skr. नरस्; the Sindhi abl. नरां or नराउ represents on the other hand Skr., and has never had anything to do with the nom.. It is, therefore, not a correct way of putting it to say that the final vowel of the nominative is changed or dropped before this ending; on the contrary, it should be said that this case is derived direct from the corresponding case of the older language. In nouns which end in, ,,the ablative case results from the custom already adverted to, of using the case-endings of the Skr. a-stem for nouns of all classes. In Sanskrit, while formed its abl. नरात्, नदी made, not नदीयात्, but नद्या:, वधू made its abl. :; but all this was too complicated for the rustic folk. By far the larger number of the nouns in their language were of the type, and the minority were soon made to follow that type too. So it came to pass that in Apabhranśa the common abl. ended in hu or he, with the final vowel of the stem preceding it, as नराहु, नदीह, or नदीहे, बहहे, or •हु. Sindhi goes a step °F. further than this. It knows only one form, F; and this it simply sticks on to the stem, merely shortening the final vowel by the weight of the termination; thus, "rope," abl. Thus that which was नोडियां; मिरूँ “ wild beast,” मिरुत्र. a bonâ-fide synthetical case in nouns of the a-stem, becomes almost a separate case-affix or particle in other nouns. This is, in my opinion, not an isolated instance of this process. If my method of interpretation be correct, there are, as we shall see when we come to the case-particles, several other instances of bonâ-fide synthetical case-endings having been broken off from the stem and used as particles. In the plural, this ending has come to be regarded quite as a particle, and is appended to the oblique form of the noun, as "from houses," which is the obl. घरनि+आं. It is easily seen that this ending has no business at all in the plural, as it represents distinctly the Skr. singular |