By some of the native phonetists it is identified with the aspiration of the sonant aspirates — with the element by which, for example, gh differs from g. This view is supported by the derivation of h from the aspirates (next paragraph), by that of ḷ + h from ḍh (54), and by the treatment of initial h after a final mute (163).
66. The h, as already noticed, is not an original sound, but comes in nearly all cases from an older gh (for the few instances of its derivation from dh and bh, see below, 223g). It is a vastly more frequent sound than the unchanged gh (namely, as 7 to 1): more frequent, indeed, than any of the guttural mutes except k. It appears, like j (219), to include in itself two stages of corruption of gh: one corresponding with that of k to c, the other with that of k to ç; see below, 223, for the roots belonging to the two classes respectively. Like the other sounds of guttural derivation, it sometimes exhibits “reversion” (43) to its original.
67. The ः ḥ, or visarga (visarjanīya, as it is uniformly called by the Prātiçākhyas and by Pāṇini, probably as belonging to the end of a syllable), appears to be merely a surd breathing, a final h-sound (in the European sense of h), uttered in the articulating position of the preceding vowel.
a. One Prātiçākhya (TPr. ii. 48) gives just this last description of it. It is by various authorities classed with h, or with h and a: all of them are alike sounds in whose utterance the mouth-organs have no definite shaping action.
68. The visarga is not original, but always only a substitute for final s or r, neither of which is allowed to maintain itself unchanged (170 ff.). It is a comparatively recent member of the alphabetic system; the other euphonic changes of final s and r have not passed through visarga as an intermediate stage. And the Hindu authorities are considerably discordant with one another as to how far ḥ is a necessary substitute, and how far a permitted one, alternative with a sibilant, before a following initial surd.
69. Before a surd guttural or labial, respectively, some of the native authorities permit, while others require, conversion of final s or r into the so-called jihvāmūlīya and upadhmānīya spirants. It may be fairly questioned, perhaps, whether these two sounds are not pure grammatical abstractions, devised (like the long ḷ-vowel: 23a) in order to round out the alphabet to greater symmetry. At any rate, both manuscripts and printed texts in general make no account of them. Whatever individual character they may have must be, it would seem, in the direction of the (German) ch- and f-sounds. When written at all, they are wont to be transliterated by χ and φ.
