A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c7.151

v1.c7.151

= “city of sacrifice”) writes it جشپور jashpur, which, he adds, “they also call جشنپور jashnapur.” This note seems to indicate that the town had begun to be called Jajpur (for I suppose he means to indicate the soft j, almost like a z, of Eastern India, by his ش), but that the older and more correct pronunciation, Jajnapur, was still retained by some. It is curious that the town should have retained the form jaj-, while throughout Orissa the letter ज्ञ is regularly and universally pronounced gy. The transition to this sound must have been in force much earlier in Western India, for Chand writes रगिनि for राज्ञी two centuries and a half before Akbar. The pronunciation probably arose, as Chand’s word would indicate, from splitting the nexus, from the fact of the nasal being the palatal ञ, which seems always to have had the sound ny or Spanish ñ; then followed the regular rejection of n and hardening of the remaining ज्य into ग्य. The whole process, however, is one entirely without a parallel in any of the languages.