6 SANSKRIT, PRAKRIT, AND APABHRANQA
a and a yielded to au in the dual, asas to as, a to tint, ebhis to ais, dm to anam in the plural ; ni alone is permissible in the locative singular of an stems ; the effective distinction of root and derivative stems in J disappears; the intrusion of weak forms into the place of strong and vice versa is banished ; the irregular vas of the vocative of vant stems is abandoned, and by eliminating the nominative yuvam and ablative yuvat the pronominal declen- sion is harmonized with the simplicity of the three forms of the nominal. Similarly, in verbal forms the variant ntasi in the first plural active is laid aside, the e of the third singular middle yields to te, 4hva in the second plural to dhvam, and forms in r in the third plural are confined to the perfect and the root gi; in the imperative dhvat is dropped, and dhi is no longer permitted to rival hi in the second person. Far more important is the laying aside of the subjunctive, whose functions were felt to.be adequately performed by the optative, save in so far as a com- plete set of forms was made up for the imperative by utilizing the first persons. Even in the optative the wealth of forms is seriously diminished, only the present and a specialized precative being allowed. The rich variety of infinitives is steadily lessened ; the final result allows only that in turn, while of the gerunds that in tva supersedes tvl and tvdya. Against these losses can be set little more than the development of two forms of periphrasis, the future middle in take, and the perfect l composed of a nominal accusative form with the auxiliaries kr, bhu, or as, the extended use of gerundives in tavya and antya, the creation of a perfect active participle in tavant, the invention of a new third singular aorist passive as in adayisi, and the development of tertiary verbal forms.
In some of these losses Sanskrit keeps pace with popular speech, but the evidence is conclusive against ascribing too much weight to this fact. While such categories as the dual of noun and verb alike, the middle, and the past tenses, practically vanished from popular speech, Sanskrit rigidly retains them. On the other hand it rejects irregularities which popular speech permitted to survive, such as the a of the instrumental singular and nomina- tive plural neuter of a stems, the asas of the masculine plural, the
1 On changes in the use of verbal forms see L. Renou, La valtur du parfait dans Us hymnes vldiques (1925), pp. 88 ff., 188 ff.
