I. ALLGEMEINES UND SPRACHE. VEDIC GRAMMAR. b. When a consonant is followed by ñ, n, or m, the same parasitic vowel often appears; e. g. yajñá- (- yajaná-) 'sacrifice'; gná- (= gºná-) 'woman'. It is, however, here frequent only as representing the second syllable after the caesura in triştubh and jagati verses; it rarely occurs at the beginning of such verses, and never at the end ¹. 14 VOWEL GRADATION. I. The Guna series: e o ar. 22. A. Low grade: iur.-In the same root or stem the simple vowels i url are found to interchange with the respective high grade forms e o ar al³ called Guna ('secondary form'?) by the native grammarians, according to the conditions under which the formative elements are attached. Beside these appear, but much less frequently, the long grade forms ai au ăr called Vṛddhi ('increase') by the same authorities. The latter regarded the simple vowels. as the fundamental grade, which, from the Indian, point of view, these vowels often evidently represent: thus from ūrṇavábhi- (SB.) 'spider', we have the derivative formation aurṇavābhá- ‘sprung from a spider'4. Comparative grammar has, however, shown that in such forms we have only a secondary application of an old habit of gradation derived from the IE. period, and that Guna 5 represents the normal stage from which the low grade form, with reduced or altogether lacking vowel, arose in less accented syllables. This theory alone can satisfactorily explain the parallel treatment of Guna gradation (e o ar beside i u r) and Samprasāraṇa gradation (ya va ra beside i u r), as in diş-tá-, di-dés-a (dis point out') and is-tá-, iyáj-a (yaj- 'sacrifice'). In other words, i ur can easily be explained as reduced forms of both Guna and Samprasāraṇa syllables (as ending or beginning with i u r), while the divergent 'strengthening' of i u r, under the same conditions, to e o ar or ya va ra cannot be accounted for7. The interchange of Guna and simple vowel is generally accompanied by a shift of accent: Guna appears in the syllable which bears the accent, but is replaced by the simple vowel when the accent is transferred to the following syllable. This shows itself most clearly in inflexional forms; e. g. é-mi 'I go', but i-más we go'; ap-nó-mi (AV.) 'I obtain', but āp-nu-más 'we obtain'; várdhāya, but vrdhaya 'to further'. Hence it is highly probable that change of accent was the cause of the gradation ³. a. Long grade or Vṛddhi: ai, au, ăr.- Vṛddhi is far more restricted in use than Guna, and as it nearly always appears where Guna is to be expected, it may be regarded as a lengthened variety of it9 dating back to the IE. period. I See OLDENBERG, Prolegomena, 374, note. 2 This interchange was already noticed by Yaska; see Nirukta x. 17. normal stage in the gradation of the a- vowels in many roots: see 24; WACKER- NAGEL I, 55 b. 6 The vowel sometimes disappears in the low grade of the a-series (Schwundstufe') see 24. 3 The only root in which the gradation al:! is found is klp-, cp. 14. It is employed in word-formation much in the same way 7 Cp. WACKERNAGEL 1, 55. as in verbal and nominal inflexion. 8 Occasional exceptions, such as vŕka- 4 See below a, 3 and cp. 25 B2; WACKER- | 'wolf', are capable of explanation: cp. NAGEL 1, 55, p. 62, note (top). 5 Botha and à represent the Guna or WACKERNAGEL 1, 57. 9 'Dehnstufe'; cp. WACKERNAGEL 1, 61.
