Introduction. 11 DOU to speak it somewhat differently nowadays. By Europeans it is variously pronounced — perbaps oftener as s tban as sh. 42. All three sibilants are always surd. 43. D. Aspiration; h. This is usually pronounced like the ordinary European surd aspiration h. But its true value in the euphony of the language is that of a sonant. It is not an original sound of the language, but comes in most cases from an older gh, in some few cases from dh or bh. It appears to include in itself two stages of corruption of gh: one corresponding with that of k to c, the other with that of k to g. 44. E. Visarga: ì. The ḥ appears to be merely a surd breath- ing, a final h-sound (in the European sense of h), uttered in the articulating position of the preceding vowel. The risarga is not original, but always a mere substitute for final s or r. 45. F. Anusvara. The anusvāra, å or in, is a nasal sound lacking that closure of the organs which is required to make a nasal mute; in its utterance there is nasal resonance along with some degree of openness of the mouth. European scholars give the anusvāra the value of the nasal in the French -an, -on, -en, -in, etc., wbich is a mere nasal coloring of the preceding vowel. 46. Two different signs, · and , are used in the MSS. to indicate the anusvāra. Most commonly · is employed; ☺ will not often be met with in printed texts, except to mark the change of a nasal mute to anusvāra before a following semivowel, parti- cularly l; thus, ara qat tanl labdhān. Cf. § 139. 47. It is convenient in transliteration to distinguish the assi- milated m (in all cases) by a special sign ń, from the anusvāra of more independent origin, represented by ń. Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®
