CHAPTER VIII LOANWORDS IN SANSKRIT § i. Non-Aryan Influence on Sanskirt In the preceding chapters the history and development of the Sanskrit language has been described, from its remote Indo- European beginnings until it received final and definite form in India. The process was one of continual linguistic change, and when Sanskrit was artificially stabilised by the grammarians, this process was continued in the popular speech to produce first the Middle Indo-Aryan languages and finally the Modern Indo- Aryan languages. So far we have dealt only with developments that affected the inherited linguistic material which constitutes the basic texture of the language. But this is not all that has to be taken into consideration, since there are to be found in addition many elements in the language whose origin is to be sought elsewhere, namely in the influence of the various non-Aryan languages in contact with which Indo-Aryan developed. Such influence affected mainly of course the vocabulary of the language. In more general terms such influence is'seen in the phonetic development of a new series of occlusives, the so- called cerebrals. To begin with cerebrals appear in pure Aryan words as a result of phonetic changes affecting these ( nizda -> nizda-> mda-) and although such a development is a part of the processes taking place within Indo-Aryan itself, it can hardly be an accident that it should occur in the only branch of Indo- European which was in contact with languages possessing such sounds. In grammar the rapid loss of the Indo-European grammar in the stages subsequent to Sanskrit was very likely accelerated by the acquisition of Aryan speech by peoples who spoke originally different languages. On the other hand foreign influence in matters of detail is always difficult to establish. One feature in Sanskrit which may perhaps be assigned to such influence is the use of the gerund or conjunctive participle. In form these adverbial participles are of course purely Indo- 374
