A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v2.c12.s2.40

v2.c12.s2.40

Gujarati has an unique interrogative शों m., शी f., शुं n., the only approach to which in the rest of the group is S. क्त, used only as a neuter. Vans Taylor (p. 73) refers us back to the acknowledged alliance between श and क in the leading Aryan languages, as in Skr. श्वन्, Greek κύων. But it is important to observe that these greater phonetic laws work only in the sphere of the larger groups of the Indo-European family: within the limits of any one particular group, their working, if it exists at all, is very feeble and restricted. It is beyond a doubt that Sanskrit exhibits words containing श which are weaker forms of an older word with क, the stronger form of which has been preserved by the cognate languages. But when once the parent language of the Indian group has preserved and stereotyped a form in क, it is not found that its descendants modify this क into श; an initial क stands firm for the most part, at least a change from it into श would be of too radical and wide a nature for the modern Indian languages, which do not deal in those vast organic changes which were at work in the infancy of the world. We must rather look for the origin of this form by the light of changes of such a nature as are prevalent within the restricted limits of our group, instead of hunting up all possible modifications in every country and age to which the Aryan speech has penetrated. If we can with difficulty find a single dubious instance of the change from क to च, so frequent in Sanskrit, among its descendants, we should hardly be justified in going further back still to search for a change, which is in point of time prior to Sanskrit itself.