[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit sandhi and pronounciation

[Madhav Deshpande]

Here are some scholarly deliberations on visarga versus parasavarṇa in
Sanskrit:

W. S. Allen (1953: 51):

"In later, though still ancient, times there appears to have been a
tendency for -*ḥ* to extend its usage to contexts other than in pausa. The
earliest of these extensions was to the position before the initial
fricatives *ś, ṣ**, s,*

where it replaced the homorganic final *ś, ṣ, s* (*indraśśūraḥ **> indraḥ
śūraḥ*, &c). This practice was then extended to the position before the velar
and labial voiceless stops: in connexion with this innovation we find
mentioned the names of  Āgniveśya, Vālmīki, Śākalya, and the
Mādhyandina school,
whilst the ancient grammarian Śākaṭāyana is quoted as holding to the more
conservative practice."


Allen also refers to A. H. Fry’s (1941) view that “the spread of *-ḥ* was
due to the writers of Classical Sanskrit operating with a phonemic
orthography.”


Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]


On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 2:52 PM Robert Zydenbos <zydenbos at lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
wrote:

> If I may chip in supporting examples from Karnataka: what I have seen
> routinely in Sanskrit manuscripts there is the assimilation of the visarga
> and the following sibilant: nissaṃdehataḥ, niśśabdatvam, etc. etc.
> Therefore a word like nissaṃdehataḥ, which is also used in a more highly
> literary style of Kannada, is written just so: ನಿಸ್ಸಂದೇಹತಃ, and in
> libraries one can see signs that read ನಿಶ್ಶಬದವಾಗಿರಿ – niśśabdavāgiri 'be
> quiet'.
>
> Robert Zydenbos
>
> Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY wrote on 09.08.22 21:31:
>
> "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.   […]
>
>
> 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 .*
>>
>
>
> --
> Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos / ಪ್ರೊ. ಡಾ. ರೊಬೆರ್ತ್ ಜೆಯ್ದೆನ್ಬೊಸ್
> Institute of Indology and Tibetology
> Department of Asian Studies
> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University of Munich – LMU)
> Germany
>
>
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