PHONOLOGY 79 first which operated in all conditions, there exists an alternation in the roots affected between palatalised and non-palatalised forms, depending on whether the vowel following was origin- ally I or o. This is seen in perfects like jaghina * slew ' and jigdya ‘ conquered ', as contrasted with the present tense forms hdnti and jdyati. Similar alternation is not permissible in the case of roots whose j and h belong to the first palatal series, e.g. jajana 1 begat A (jan- : Av. zan-) and juhava * called ' (hu : Av. zav-). To begin with the distribution of palatalised and non- palatalised foijns must have depended entirely on the nature of the succeeding vowel, and consequently an alternation be- tween the two must have been active in the paradigms of noun and verb. In the parallel palatalisation of Slavonic such alter- nation exists, e.g. between vluku 4 wolf ’ nom. s. and vlule voc. s., and between pekg ( I cook' and pecetu 'he cooks'. Since the natural tendency of linguistic evolution is to smooth out such irregularities (as is done later in Russian, etc.) it is likely that the Slavonic palatalisation did not long precede the beginning of the literary tradition. On the other hand in the case of Indo-Iranian the change had taken place early enough for the working of analogy to become widely effective. Varia- tion in the paradigms of noun and verb after the Slavonic style has been eliminated, except as between vocalic and consonantal suffixes (loc. s. vact, loc. pi. vdksu). On the other hand the alter- nation remains active between different nominal derivatives (i bhoga - : bhoja -, etc.). At the beginning of a root alternation between palatal and guttural remains active only in the case of a few roots as those quoted above. Mostly it is eliminated, and in this respect Sanskrit shows a greater tendency to innovation than Old Iranian ; cf. Skt, akar 3rd sg. root aor., Av. lord{ (early Aryan acarKekert ), and agamat, a-aor. Av. In the latter case the proper name Jamadagni- (' who goes to the fire ') preserves the earlier, pre-Vedic form. In the reduplica- tion of the perfect, etc., the alternation always remains, based on the fact that the vowel of the reduplicating syllable was originally e (jagdma<g v, eg u, dme J etc.). There are a few instances in Sanskrit where j of the older palatal series alternates with g in the formation of nominal derivatives, e.g. sdrga- 'emission' (srj-, Av. ham-) ' yaga-
- sacrifice ' (yaj- t Av. yaz -). The guttural here cannot be
