[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit sandhi and pronounciation

[Dominik Wujastyk]

"overwhelmingly" only if you judge mainly by print sources.  In my
experience, manuscript scribes from Nepal and from Kashmir routinely use
sibilant-assimilation sandhis of the form namaśsivāya.   I think this is
also true of MSS from Kerala and probably elsewhere too.  I think the
dominance of -aḥ before sibilants is an artefact of normalizations in
nineteenth and twentieth century editing and printing practice.  Like the
occlusion of extremely common MS forms such as karmma, dharmma, etc.
Word-final nasals too are normally left as savarṇa nasals and not converted
to anusvāra in early Nepalese MSS.  In short, sandhi practices are much
more flexible and varied in the manuscript record than in printed texts
(while remaining Pāṇinian).

Best,
Dominik


On Thu, 4 Aug 2022 at 18:28, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> *[...]*
> 1)
> *namaḥ śivāya* is overwhelmingly written *namaḥ śivāya* and rarely as *namaś
> śivāya* or  *namaśśivāya .*
>
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