The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c16.12

v1.c16.12

As these inscriptions of Boghaz-köi show the language still one and undivided, we obtain a limit after which the differentiation of Irānian and Indo-Āryan must have begun. These Āryan languages have some characteristics in common which distinguish them from all others: in particular they agree in confusing together the three original vowels *a*, *e*, and *o*, whether long or short, into one sound which is written with the symbols for *a* and *ā*. In modern India at least the short sound is pronounced with the obscure vowel found in the English ‘but,’ a fact which produced the English spelling of the Hindu words ‘pundit’ (*paṇḍita*) and ‘suttee’ (*satī*), and disguised the liquor compounded of five (*pañcha*) ingredients under the apparently English form of ‘punch.’ They agree also on the whole in the case system of the noun, a system to which the Slav and Armenian languages offer the closest approximation, and in the elaborate mood and voice system of the verb, to which the only parallel is to be found in the similar, though not in all respects identical, paradigms of Greek. Here the other languages, except the Slavonic, fall far short of the elaborate and intricate Āryan verb system, whether it be, as is most likely, that the other tribes have lost a large part of their share of the common inheritance, or whether some of the languages drifted apart, before the complete system, seen in the Āryan and Greek verbs, had developed. Other changes may with probability be attributed to the influence of the peoples whom they conquered and enslaved. A characteristic, which distinguishes the languages of this stock in both Persia and India is the tendency to confuse *r* and *l*, a tendency which is characteristic of practically all the languages of the far east. In India *r* is often found in words where the languages of the same stock in Europe show *l*; *l* is also, though not so frequently, found for *r*; in the Old Persian of the Achaemenid inscriptions *l* is found only in two foreign words, and has otherwise been entirely replaced by *r*.