12 22. The prepositions are often free, i. e., they are frequently used independently of the verb. There are also adnominal prepositions (or adverbs) that govern cases; eg. kam acchā yuñjāthe rathan (v 74 3); vrstim ava divā invantam (vii 642); jāyā patim vahati vagnunā sumat 'the wife weds the husband with a shout of joy' (x 32 3); devesu ā; etc. 23. antar precedes the word it governs ; (as in Old Persian); e.g. kadă nu antar varu ne bhuvāni (vii 86 2). At the next, i.e., Later Vedic stage, the language presents the following special features :- Old (and hieratic) words are going out of I. use. 2. some The sandhi phenomenon assumes rigidity. a is elided after -o<-as; e.g. so'pi <saḥ api. 3. e has become a monophthong. 4. There is some resistance to the cerebralisa- tion of dentals; e.g. vistara- beside earlier vișțara-; sustha- beside older sușthu, 5. Derivatives in -tat and -tati go out of use; man and -van are replaced by -mant and -vant respectively. 6. The root-noun declensions are becoming defunct (e.g. gopa->gopa-), and consonantal stems are being replaced by the vowel stems (e.g. nakt-> nakta-, spas-> spaša-,' ni->nara-). Alternative declensional forms are on their way to elimination. 7. The older patterns of i, -ī and -u declensions are dying out. That is, forms like veḥ (pom. sg.),
