20 SANSKRIT, PRAKRIT, AND APABHRANgA
middle participle of causatives and denominatives is often formed by ana, partly doubtless on grounds of metrical convenience; the rule that the gerund is formed by tva in simple, in ya in compound, verbs is constantly disregarded ; minutiae such as the substitution of dhdvati for the present of sr are habitually neglected. The tendency to prefer a bases is seen in the verb and the noun alike, giving such forms as difd and duhitd. ' It was inevitable that so distinguished models as the Maha- bhdrata and the Ramdyana should deeply affect later poets, and Patafijali, in citing an epic fragment containing the irregular term priydkhya in lieu of priydkhydya, expressly asserts that poets commit such irregularities (chandovat kavayah kurvanti). We find, therefore, occasional errors such as the confusion of antla.nA atl, of tvd and ya, of active and middle, as well as regular dis- regard of the specific sense of the past tenses as laid down by the grammarians but ignored in the epic. As in the epic, the perfect and imperfect freely interchange as tenses of simple narration without nuance of any kind. Even Kalidasa permits himself sarati and dsa for babhuva, and Cnharsa with the Ramdyana uses kavdta for the kapdta of Panini. Lesser poets, especially the poetasters who turned out inscriptions, are naturally greater sinners by far against grammatical rules, especially when they can plead metrical difficulties as excuse.
Neither the epic nor the grammarians, however, are responsible for the fundamental change which gradually besets the Kavya style, in the worst form in prose, but in varying degree even in verse. This is the change from the verbal to the nominal style, as Bhandarkar l not inaptly termed it. In the main, Vedic and epic Sanskrit show a form of speech closely akin to Greek and Latin; verbal forms are freely used, and relative clauses and clauses introduced by conjunctions are in regular employment. The essential feature of the new style is the substitution of the use of compounds for the older forms. 2 In its simplest form, of course, the practice is unobjectionable and tends to conciseness ; hataputra
1 JT3RAS. xvi. 366 ff. ; cf. Bloch, MSL. xiv. 27 IT. ; Renon, La valeur du parfait, pp. 90 ff. ; Stchoupak, MSL. xii. 1 ff. ; Jacobi, IF. xiv. 2360.
1 Jacobi {Compositum tind Ntbtnsatz, pp. 25, 91 ff.) points out that they are properly used for ornamental description, not for important qualifications, and also suggeits poetic convenience as a cause of popularity ; cf. Chap. II, § 4. See also Wackernagel, Altind. Gramm. t II. i. 35, 27, 159; Whitney, Sansk. Gramni., § 1346.
