Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages c8.51.4

c8.51.4

The elision of consonants on a large scale in the Prâkṛits is therefore to be accounted for in another way than by attributing it to a natural process of decay. The Prâkṛit words must be taken to represent the pronunciation of the corresponding Sanskrit words by an alien race. The vocal organs of the people of that race were unused to the utterance of Sanskrit sounds, and in this respect they were in the condition of children making their first attempts at articulate speech, and elided uninitial consonantal sounds and assimilated conjunct consonants as these do. When a child or a barbarous foreigner listens to an elderly or more civilized person, he has not the patience to attend to all the sounds composing a word and to reproduce them carefully, or has not acquired the habit of doing so. The first letter only makes a strong impression on his ear, and this he faithfully reproduces; and as to the rest, he realizes their quantity by pronouncing the vowels, but his tongue being untrained, the peculiar movements necessary for uttering the consonantal sounds he cannot go through, and avoids. In going over the Pâli we had to attribute the assimilation of conjuncts and other peculiarities observable in that dialect to such a cause; and now the elision in the Prâkrits that we have been considering must, I believe, be accounted for in the same way.