पृष्ठम्:The Sanskrit Language (T.Burrow).djvu/३३

26 SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN wise characteristic Indo-Aryan changes such as of zh, jh to h are not to be found {5 Finn, or as, etc.). There is therefore not the slightest doubt that the period when these borrowings took place was the primitive Indo-Iranian period, and it appears probable that the seat of this primitive Indo-Iranian must have been in the region of the middle Volga and the Urals for this contact to have been possible. One point that is noticeable when looking at a few of these words is that the change of Indo-European l, l to Aryan r, r has already taken place (7 Finn, ora, 9, Vog. sareri , etc., 16. Mordv. vargas ). This is a change which is complete in Iranian, but in- complete in Indo-Aryan. That is to say that there were dialects in early Indo-Aryan which preserved IE l (not /), as well as those (the Rigvedic) which agreed with Iranian in this respect. The Finno-Ugrian forms show that this feature must have already been widespread in the earlier, Indo-Aryan period, and the existence of r-forms in the Aryan of the Near East cor- roborates this. It cannot however have been universal, for in that case no /-forms would have been found in Sanskrit at all. It is usually quite clear that these words have been borrowed by Finno-Ugrian from Indo-Iranian and not vice versa. We have equivalents of the words in other IE languages, and before being borrowed into Finno-Ugrian they have undergone the changes characteristic of the Aryan branch. Even where an Indo-Iranian word has no actual equivalent in the other IE languages, its structure and the possibility of deriving it from a known IE root will often show it to be an old inherited word. For instance Skt. vdjra Av. vazra~ f is formed with the well- known suffix -ra (IE -ro), and can be derived from the IE root which appears in Gk. (F)aywfu 4 break, smash There are however a few words in the above list where it is not possible to be certain in this way. Nothing like the Indo-Iranian word for ' bee ' (No. 21) is found in any other IE language, and this makes it more likely on the whole that in this case the Indo- Iranians have adopted a Finno-Ugrian word. Similar considera- tions apply to Nos. 22 (Skt. suka-) and 23 (Skt. chaga -). There may be further examples of Finno-Ugrian words in Indo- Iranian, but the matter has never been investigated from this point of view. As plausible equations we may mention : Skt. kapha- ' phlegm Av. kafa - , Pers. kaf 'foam, scum: ^