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.”
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@list.indology.info> wrote:[...]1)namaḥ śivāya is overwhelmingly written namaḥ śivāya and rarely as namaś śivāya or namaśśivāya .
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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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