I46 THE FORMATION OF NOUNS hands amavant- 1 strong etc., and, outside Indo-Iranian, in Greek : a pUi$, x apUvra (for ° Feis 1 , °Fcvra) 4 having grace, graceful IxOvoetg 1 abounding in fish etc. In the Rgveda there are occasional examples of non-adjectival formations in -vant ; for instance dsvavant- sometimes appears not as an adjective, but as an abstract-collective noun, e.g. 1. 83. i, divdvati prathamo gosu gacchati ' he goes first in (the possession of) horses and cows where the singular collective corresponds to the plural gosu. Such traces are valuable in that there was originally an old class of neuters in - vant related to the adjectives in -vant according to the usual principle. Second- ary formations with the neuter suffixes are known in Hittite (antuhsatar ‘ mankind from antnhsas , ' man etc.), and such are to be ascribed to Indo-European. We may construct on these lines a neuter *dsvavar ‘ collectivity of horses, property in horses * alternating in the way usual in the case of neuters with
- dsvavan- } or with extension dsvavant on the basis of which
- aivavdnt 4 possessor of horses would be derived in the usual
way. Another piece of evidence is got by comparing Av. karsivant - ' cultivator ' with Ski. krsivald - and kdrswana - ‘ id The alternation of suffix between the last two words can only be explained by the existence of an old alternating neuter
- karsivarjn t and from this Av. karsivant - has been derived in
the same way as dsvavant-. According to the usual system one would expect the original accent of the adjectives in -vant to have been on the suffix. In the secondary formations in Sanskrit this accentuation appears in nrvanU * manly padvdnt - ' having feet J and nasvdnt- 1 having a nose where the primitive stems are monosyllabic, and in some cases where the primitive stem is accented on the suffix (but never when this stem ends in -a or -a), agnivdnt- 4 having a fire dsanvdnt- 4 having a mouth J , etc. The primary formations have the accent only in a minority of cases. The same tendency to throw back the accent was observed in the adjectives in -van. The suffix -mant appears in very few primary derivatives, namely virukmant - 4 shining dyumdni- 4 bright ' (cf. dyumnd nt. ' brightness susumdnt- 4 kind ' (cf. susumnd- nt. ‘ kind, ness '), dasmdni- 4 glorious ’ (only dasmdt nt. sg. used adverbi- ally). The relation of dsumdnt - ' swift ' [asumdt adv.) to dsu- recalls that of yahvdnt- to yahu-, etc. Elsewhere it is used as a
