finals before a pause they have — doubtless at a comparatively recent period of phonetic history — come to be reduced. Words will everywhere in this work be written with final s or r instead of ḥ; and the rules of combination will be stated as for the two more original sounds, and not for the visarga.
Deaspiration.
153. An aspirate mute is changed to a non-aspirate before another non-nasal mute or before a sibilant; it stands unaltered only before a vowel or semivowel or nasal.
a. Such a case can only arise in internal combination, since the processes of external combination presuppose the reduction of the aspirate to a non-aspirate surd (152).
b. Practically, also, the rules as to changes of aspirates concern almost only the sonant aspirates, since the surd, being of later development and rarer occurrence, are hardly ever found in situations that call for their application.
154. Hence, if such a mute is to be doubled, it is doubled by prefixing its own corresponding non-aspirate.
a. But in the manuscripts, both Vedic and later, an aspirate mute is not seldom found written double — especially, if it be one of rare occurrence: for example (RV.), akhkhalī, jájhjhatī.
155. In a few roots, when a final sonant aspirate (घ् gh, ध् dh, भ् bh; also ह् h, as representing an original घ् gh) thus loses its aspiration, the initial sonant consonant (ग् g or द् d or ब् b) becomes aspirate.
a. That is to say, the original initial aspirate of such roots is restored, when its presence does not interfere with the euphonic law, of comparatively recent origin, which (in Sanskrit as in Greek) forbids a root to both begin and end with an aspirate.
b. The roots which allow this peculiar change are:
in gh — dagh;
in h (for original gh) — dah, dih, duh, druh, dṛṅh, guh; and also grah (in the later desiderative jighṛkṣa);
in dh — bandh, bādh, budh;
in bh — dabh (but only in the later desiderative dhipsa, for which the older language has dipsa).
