THE FORMATION OF NOUNS 209 from the other IE languages in the enormous development which the system has undergone, which is unparalleled else- where. This development, however, is characteristic only of the classical-language, and in the Vedic language the use made of nominal composition is much more restricted. It is estimated that in the Rgveda the role it plays is not more important than in Homeric Greek. From the point of view of comparative philology it is mainly the Vedic language that has to be con- sidered. The unlimited development of nominal composition in the later classical literature is artificial and not based on spoken usage. The main features of a compound, though not invariably present, are (i) the appearance of the first member in its stem form, without the inflectional endings with which, except in the vocative, it is associated in independent use, and (2) the uniting of the two elements under one accent. The first feature is of great interest from the point of view of early Indo-European morphology, since it points to a time when the simple stem of a noun or adjective could appear in syntactical relation to other words of the sentence, without the case terminations which later became obligatory for the expression of such relationships. A compound comes into existence when two words appear so regularly and frequently together that they become to all intents and purposes a single expression, a process which is normally associated with the development of a specialised meaning. In the case of inflected groups this leads to compounds like Bfhaspdti- proper name of a divinity (‘ lord of prayer '). On the other hand a compound like vispdti - ' chief of a clan ' can only derive, as a type, from a state of affairs in which the relationship which is later expressed by the genitive case, could be expressed by the simple juxtaposition of two nouns in a certain order (vtk poti-s ), The compounds as a system are the fossilised remains of an earlier state of Indo-European which has long been supplanted by the consistently inflected type which appears in Sanskrit and the classical languages. Four main classes of compound were recognised by the Indian grammarians, Tatpurusa (with a special subdivision Kar- niadharaya) Bahuvrihi , Dvandva and Avyayibhdva, terms which will be defined below. Of these the last two are in the main specifically Indian developments ; the types inherited from Indo-European are those classified as tatpurusa and bahuvrihi.
