A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c5.7

v1.c5.7

It must, however, be further noted that Sanskrit permitted no hiatus, that is, no vowel could follow another without the intervention of a consonant; such forms as *meus*, *tuus*, would be foreign to its genius. The principal expedient adopted to prevent a hiatus was the hardening or thickening of the first of two vowels into its corresponding consonantal utterance, and in this manner many forms have been built up. In the spoken languages of early India, however, no such delicacy was felt, a consonant standing singly in the middle of a word was often dropped, and the two vowels thus brought into juxtaposition were allowed so to remain without any compunction. Nay, so far from feeling this objectionable, the Prakrit poets reject consonants to such an extent that their words are often mere floating masses of pulp from which all the bones have been removed. Thus, *prākṛita* becomes *pâua*; *subhaga*, *suhaa*; *niyoga*, *nioö*. In some instances the modern languages have retained Prakrit forms, but in so doing have kept the vowels quite distinct, so that no difficult or complicated vowel-sounds have arisen from their amalgamation. The foreigner, therefore, experiences no such difficulty in pronouncing the Indian vowels as he does in the French combinations *oeu*, *eui*, or the German *oe*, *ue*, nor are there any instances of two different sets of vowels having the same pronunciation as in the English, where *weak* sounds precisely the same as *week*; *meat*, *beat*, as *meet*, *beet*;¹ nor are there any instances where the same combination has four or five different sounds, as in *cough*, *rough*, *bough*, *dough*, *hough*, *through*, pronounced *cauf*, *ruff*, *bow*, *do*, *hock*, *throo*.