16 intermediate sound (e.g. tāḥ etaḥ>tā etāḥ; tapah- āsanam>tapa-āsanam). 2. Vocabulary is enriched by the incorpora- tion of new material. 3. The power of combining words into a compound is almost unlimited. Alternative declensional forms are entirely eliminated. New analogical forms for the neuter are established (e.g. madhune, madhunaḥ, dātīņi etc.) 5. The subjunctive mood is lost; but its first personal forms are retained as the corresponding forms of the imperative. The precative, (originally a peculiar form of the optative aorist), is a very restricted idiom. Only the present forms of the two moods, the optative and the imperative, survive. As in the two earlier stages the injunctive survives as an alternative idiom only when the prohibitive particle mā is used, but then the imperative is an alternative idiom. Thus: mā kārșīḥ ; mā kuru. 6. The passive and the possessive past participle are accepted in the value of the perfect (nisthā). The possessive past participle does not become a popular idiom, and possibly it had really belonged to the dialect of the North-west as Khotanese (a Middle Iranian neighbouring language) indicates. The following table illustrates some points of morphological development of Old Indo-Aryan through its different stages.
