34 SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN length of time must be assumed for their completion. At the same time we have the impression that the period of fairly rapid linguistic change preceded the Vedic period. With the estab- lishment of a recognised literary language, and a tradition of education associated with it, this rapid evolution was stopped as far as classical Sanskrit is concerned. The phonetic changes that distinguish Classical Sanskrit from the Vedic language are negligible in comparison with those that took place in the immediate pre- Vedic period. On the other hand the popular language, developing soon into the Prakrits, continued to show this tendency to rapid change. In particular it is interesting to note that the type of change seen in the examples listed above is similar to that of the later Middle Indo-Aryan changes. The assimilation of consonant groups in final position is the be- ginning of a process that affects all consonant groups. The development of voiced aspirates to h, which is general in the case of /A, zh and sporadic elsewhere, is continued in Pali and Prakrit. The cerebral consonants once created become more and more prevalent. From the first Indo-Aryan is affected by certain characteristic tendencies to change which continue to be influential in later periods. These changes which set in from the beginning were rapid, and in the language of the people continued to be rapid. It was only the standardisation of San- skrit at a very early period by organisers of Brahman civilisa- tion, that arrested this development, in the case of the classical language, before it had proceeded too long, and thereby pre- served for us a form of language which in most respects is more archaic and less altered from original Indo-European than any other member of the family.
