पृष्ठम्:A Sanskrit primer (1901).djvu/१८

Introduction, Semivowels palatal ay lingual to a lua;s sonant. dental cani labial a 2. Sibilants: palatal I $; lingual o ş; dental # 8. Aspiration <h. 2. The above order is that in which the sounds are catalogued by native grammarians; and European scholars bave adopted it as the alphabetic order, for dictionaries, etc. The writing runs from left to right. 3. The theory of the devanāgarī mode of writing is syllabic and consonantal. That is, it regards as the written unit, not the simple sound, but the syllable; and further, it regards as the sub- stantial part of the syllable the consonant (or the consonants) pre- ceding the vowel — this latter being merely implied, as is the case with short a, except when initial, or, if written, being written by a subordinate sign attached to the consonant. 4. Hence follow these two principles: A. The forms of the vowel-characters given above are used only when the vowel forms a syllable by itself, or is not combined with a preceding consonant: that is, when it is initial, or preceded by another vowel. In combination with a consonant, other modes of representation are used. B. If more than one consonant precede a vowel, forming with it a single syllable, their characters must be combined into a single character 5. According to the Hindu mode of dividing syllables, each syllable must end in a vowel, or visarga, or anusvāra, except at the end of the word; and as ordinary Hindu usage does not divide the words of a sentence in writing, a final consonant is combined into one syllable with the initial vowel or consonant of the following word. so that a syllable ends in a consonant only at the end of m the sentence. Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®