A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v3.c17.86

v3.c17.86

The consonantal changes are in accordance with the treatment of the nexus as explained in Vol. I. p. 304. The striving after uniformity is seen, however, in the retention of the alternative forms having the same type as the present, and it is, moreover, worth observing that the forms which reproduce the type of the Sanskrit without the intermediate द् seem by degrees to have been misunderstood. The illiterate masses, and even those better instructed, seem to have missed the issati which so generally indicated to their minds the future tense, and regarded those forms which had not this familiar sound as present tenses. So they made double futures by adding the issa to them. Thus from दृश् “to see,” future द्रक्ष्यति, Pali made a form dakkhati, but the people by degrees took this for a present, and made what to them seemed a more correct future dakkhissati. I mention this here as I shall have occasion hereafter to discuss the much-debated question of the origin of the familiar modern stem dekh “see” (see § 17). Another instance is