The Sanskrit originals of these words are उंदरु or उंदर, कणक or fun, and fu respectively, so that the oblique represents the older form more accurately than the nominative does. The practice has even been extended to words of Persian origin, so deeply seated in the popular mind is the principle of analogy. Thus,

Similarly, in a large number of nouns of all three genders, a

long û in the final syllable is changed to a; as,

Skr. अङ्कुर् “sprout.”

M. अंकूर, obl. अंकरा.

युक्ति “arrangement,” M. जुगूत “ trick,” obl. जुगती.

In all these words, and they are tolerably numerous, there is no authority in the derivation for the long û; and the form of the oblique, in consequence, is due to the slightness of the difference in the vulgar pronunciation between the three short vowels. The above process, it must be explained, is only applicable to words where the vowel is preceded by a consonant; when it is preceded by another vowel, phonetic considerations induce a different process. becomes hardened to, and to, in such cases, at least in the Konkani dialect. In the Dakhini it is more usual to shorten the vowel, as "woman," obl. Konkani बायले, Dakhini बाइले. Thus Tuka says,

तुका म्हणे येती बाइले असडे । फुंदोनियां रडे हांसे कांहीं ॥ "Quoth Tuka, thus the good wife breaks out, sobbing she weeps and at times laughs."-Abhanga, 567, 3.

And of words in,"temple," obl. Konk., Dakh. ; as again from Tukaram—

गाय देउळीं देवापासीं

"Sings in the temple before the god."-Abh. 569, 3.

Of the two forms, the Dakhini, which merely shortens the vowel, is the older and more natural; the Konkani agrees with what I have called above the weak declension of Marathi, which bears evident signs of being comparatively modern. It is, perhaps, a sign of the increased tendency to Sanskritize, that the old hiatus, which neither Prakrit nor any of the moderns objected to, should have begun to be replaced by the semivowel.

§ 51. In noticing the peculiar ablative of Sindhi, I said that it was not an isolated instance of an inflectional case-ending having been detached and used as a case-particle. The other instances of the same process must now be exhibited, as holding a middle place between purely synthetical terminations, such as those of the locative and instrumental of Gujarati, Sindhi, and other languages, and purely analytical methods of indicating cases, such as the particles T,,, and the like. They owe their existence to the tendency, arising out of the general confusion and abrasion of case-endings, towards adopting for all cases one good strong form of the older language. It is the Darwinian principle of the "survival of the fittest," noticed in regard to the phonesis of the group at p. 27 of Vol. I., and by virtue of which the strong forms of the neuter nom. pl., and the common gen. pl. f and wi, have usurped all the cases of all three genders of the plural in Hindi and Panjabi. In the Sindhi ablative the form or is purely synthetical for the u-stem, but it has, strictly speaking, no business with any other stem; yet it has been applied to all stems indifferently. Consequently, in all but the u- and o-stems, which descend from the Skr. a-stem, it is no longer a relic of the purely synthetical system, but has half migrated into a case-particle. On the other hand, it cannot be classed with case-particles, as kâ, ke, ki, because these latter are modern formations, not derivable from any caseending of Skr. or Prakrit, but independent words fused down into particles. I would therefore put these forms into a separate class,

and call them quasi-synthetical forms; synthetical they are by origin, being derived from Skr. or Pr. case-endings; but they are not so in the manner of their employment, being used frequently in places where neither Skr. nor Pr. would use them, and sometimes even quite detached from the noun, and used with the oblique stem, which itself contains all that is left of the synthetical case-ending.

Here we

The first of these forms to be noticed is the Marathi ablative sign, which is now used as a case-particle, and appended to the oblique stem, as sing. घराहून, pl. घरांहून; it is sometimes contracted still further into, and combined with the nom. form, as . Lassen has long ago identified this form with the Prakrit ablative plural, which has two forms, fit and सुन्तो; from a fusion of both arises हंतो. This form is found in Early-Hindi. Thus Chand, mât ga || “How far is it from Ajmer?”—Pr. R. i. 178, and aga fas fafe ye zai | "Quoth the Siddh, 'from what city?"-ib. i. 184. have two forms, and at, in the former of which the softening of the nasal into anuswâra is compensated for by lengthening the vowel, and in the latter the anuswâra has been shifted forward on to the last syllable. Lassen points out that these two forms are both pleonastic or composite, that in f being composed of the termination of the plur. instrumental f¿, and that in of the plural locative ending, with the particle, from Skr. ¬¤, an adverbial particle with an ablative meaning, generally indicating "from a place." The form f thus means "from by," and is a causal ablative; that in is "from in," and is a local ablative. Of course, with the fusion of the two forms into one, this distinction was lost, and, what is more important for our purpose, the distinction of number was by degrees lost too, so that in Old-H. and M. we have this ending used for singular as well as plural. M. has rejected the final, and lengthened the vowel, and the anuswâra not being merely the anunâsika or nasal breathing, but a method of writing

as the first member of a nexus, having been restored to its full form, the result is the form ki.

In Nepali, a Hindi dialect of the eastern area, carried into the mountains by the last king of Simrânw and his followers, when they fled there on the capture of their country by Tughlak Shah in 1322 A.D., occurs the ablative form faa “from,” which may be, perhaps, connected with this form by a reverse process. If hinto and sunto could be fused into hunto, they could just as easily become sinto, and this form would result in sit. Nepali has not yet been studied scientifically, and its phonesis is as yet imperfectly known. In a brief memorandum on the language which I have,' a tendency to favour the palatal sounds is observable, as in fan "ye," H., and the like; it is not therefore improbable that the form sinto would be preferred to hunto; and by a people so far east as the Nepalis, the preference for

over would not be felt. There is, however, another theory, which would derive sit from Skr. afa. This is open to the objection that fea means "with," whereas sit means "from." As matters at present stand, I do not venture to decide for either theory, but leave the matter sub judice, but with a preference for the former.

To return to Marathi. There is an older form of this case in हुनियां, हुनि, the existence of which would seem to militate against Lassen's theory, as it is scarcely possible that hunto should have become huniyán. To this it may be answered, first, that these two forms occur in poetry, and the lengthening may be due to metrical causes; and, secondly, a confusion has probably arisen in the popular mind between this form and that of the Prakrit gerund in Skr. in T. In this form also the old M. adds t, as in the word “sobbing" (Skr.

perhaps स्पन्दित्वा Pr. फंदूण), in the quotation from Tukaram

1 And for which I beg to express my obligations to Dr. Wright, Residency Surgeon at Kathmâṇḍo, who courteously complied with my request for information, by sending this note drawn up by a Nepali Pandit.

in the last section, though modern M. now rejects this termination, and would write. This does not seem to be organic, but a mere fashion of a certain period. There is always an element of confusion in words beginning with hu or ho, on account of their resemblance to the substantive verb, which has from an early period sounded ho. It is then possible that the form hunto was regarded as a tense of ho "to be," and the shortened form hûn would be confounded with the gerund

; and as this latter was subjected to lengthening into होऊनियां, so the ablative form may easily have been at the same period lengthened to ft. The principle of false हुनियां. analogies here at work is to be found constantly in all departments of language, and to it may be ascribed numberless eccentricities in the vulgar speech. Parts of the verb ho are used in the other languages as case-signs. Thus Bengali uses its infinitive (originally a locative of the present participle) a fora, in the sense of "from," a usage only to be explained by supposing the idea to be that of having previously been at a place but not being there now, which involves the idea of having come away from it; thus घर हते आसिलाम, “I came from the house," would be literally, "in being at the house I came," or, as we might say in colloquial English, “I have been at the house and have come away." Similar is the use of hoke or hokar "having been," in the sense of "through" in Hindi; thus, to express "I came through Benares," one would say

हून

, literally, "having been in Benares I am come. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Marathas should have thought that "from" was contracted from "having been;" and were it not for the Old-Hindi forms used by Chand, we might have been prepared to acquiesce in this view. As it is, however, Lassen's theory seems decidedly correct, and has been therefore adopted in this work. To this formation may also be ascribed the of Panjabi locatives, as in mentioned a few pages back, which is thus to be regarded as in