A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v2.c12.94

v2.c12.94

In all these words the inherent weakness of the य has led to the corruption of the two syllables of the Skr. into one in such words as *ásrâ*, *devâlâ*, while in others it has been practically softened into a diphthong in combination with the preceding consonant. It may also be conjectured that though the learned accentuated the last syllable of stems of this small class, the masses did not at any time observe this distinction, but treated them as barytones, and the final vowel has therefore not been preserved.