Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s1.t3.3

c7.s1.t3.3

²⁶ Such occurrences are relatively rare in Sanskrit, which in general disallows vowel hiatus within and between words, so that in Sanskrit texts the full or initial vowels mostly occur at the beginning of a sentence or line of verse. They are commoner in Prakrit and other languages which do permit vowel hiatus, but even here they are often avoided by writing a consonant such as *y* or *v* to represent an intervocalic glide.