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ERRATA.

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61, 25, for hladid read hlatu.
63, 4, for masj read majj.
65, 9, for तळ read नळ.

70, 12, for phrase read phase.

73, 16, for नारी read मारी.

83, 24, for माडाइज read साडाइज

105, 6, for बलें read चलें.

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simplification. Indeed, we may be permitted to hold that some, at least, of the forms laid down in the works of Sanskrit grammarians, were never actually in use in the spoken language, and with all due deference to the opinions of scholars, it may be urged that much of this elaborate development arose in an age when the speech of the people had wandered very far from the classical type. Even if it were not so, even if there ever were a time when the Aryan peasant used polysyllabic desideratives, and was familiar with multiform aorists, it is clear that he began to satisfy himself with a simpler system at a very distant epoch, for the range of forms in Pali and the other Prakrits is far narrower than in classical Sanskrit.

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Simplification is in fact the rule in all branches of the IndoEuropean family of languages, and in those we are now discussing, the verb follows this general law. To make this clear, it may be well to give here, as a preliminary matter, a slight sketch of the structure of the verb as it stands in the Sanskrit and Prakrit stages of development.

In that stage of the Sanskrit language which is usually accepted as the classical one, the verb is synthetical throughout, except in one or two tenses where, as will be hereafter shown, the analytical method has already begun to show itself. By separating the inflectional additions, and unravelling the euphonic changes necessitated by them, we may arrive at a residuum or grammarian's abstraction called the root. These roots, which have no real existence in spoken language, serve as useful and indispensable pegs on which to hang the long chain of forms which would otherwise defy all attempts at reducing them to order. Some writers have lately thought fit to sneer at the philologist and his roots, and have made themselves merry over imaginary pictures of a time when the human race talked to each other in roots only. These gentlemen set up a bugbear of their own creation for the purpose of

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