THE DECLENSION OF NOUNS 246 pasvds which directly continue the old type, but pasvds lias be- come the gen, s g. of an analogically created nom. paius T while corresponding to pasu there has been created a dat. sg. pdive by the usual levelling process. As a result of the stabilising of the accent on the root in the normal type of neuters, the only type remaining in which the accent normally changed from the stem to the termination in declension consisted of those sufhxally accented masculines and feminines in which the vowel of the suffix was elided in the weak cases (murdhd : murdhnds, etc.). The result was that in certain cases, where an old neuter noun had preserved the terminational accent in the gen. sg,, a new sufhxally accented stem was created on this analogy, and with this change of accent was associated a change of gender : paius masc. for pain neut. Of the same type is pitus : pitvds * food The number of stems inflecting in this way in the Vedic language is very small, and in addition to neuters it includes some masc. and fern, nouns : avis, dvyas ' sheep krdtus , kr divas ‘ intelligence cf. Av. xratus, xraOwo . These may be regarded as transferred neuters. Such a development is easily understandable in the case of dvi- on account of its animate nature. The action nouns in -z and -it were originally, in accord- ance with their meaning, of the neuter type, but in general they have been transferred to the masculine and feminine classes. In doing this they have normally adopted the adjectival type of declension (tnatis : mates , etc.) but the neuter type has re- mained in a few cases as an indication of their originally neuter class. The masculines of this type use sometimes special forms of the nom. acc. plur. (nom. Av. pasvas ‘ cattle Mdzvb ‘ fingers ’, acc. Skt. pasvds) but also those of the normal type [paidvas, fiastin). The Vedic declension of the stem rayt-.rdy- is of this type (n. ray is : g. ray as, etc.). It represents earlier *ram-s ; ranyds. It is a transferred neuter of the dvi- type, and the termina- tional accent of the gen. sg. has effected a change of accent from root to suffix in the nom. sg., just as has happened in the case of paid-. Besides this there exists a root stem rd- corresponding to Latin res. In the classical declension this is combined with the ray- form of the z-stem. Similar is the declension of nails, navds ‘ ship ’ (Gk. vavs, vrjcr) for *nanu-s f *nanvds . In the only place where the nom. sg. occurs in the Rgveda it is pro-
