TRACING VEDIC DIALECTS - People.fas.harvard.edu

(§5.1-2). It is especially remarkable that certain localisable innovations
in one level of Vedic language spread quickly during the next level.
This does not always occur only in an Eastern direction, as one might
think, (taking into account the history of settlement of N.India by IA
speakers), but also in other directions, as for example southwards, or
from the extreme East towards the West (§5.2)
Especially clear is the example of the diffusion of the gen. fem. in -ai
which originated in a small area of N. India (the Pañcāla land in Eastern
U.P.) and subsequently spread east- and southwards, - without affecting,
however, the West (the Kuru area) and the "North" (Panjab and the
E.Gandhāra area of Pāṇini's bhāṣā).
Among the innovations treated in this paper (and a forthcoming one,
treated in Notes on Ved. dialects, 1) are the following:
(1) In the field of phonetics:
Innovations:
* khy > kś (Kuru )
* -ḍ- > ḷ- (Kuru)
* -jm- > ym (part of Kuru area)
* CuV > CV (Kuru)
* purūvasu- > puro° (part of Kuru area)
* parāyate, etc. > palā° (Kuru)
* preṅkha > pleṅkha (part of Kuru area)
* svar, etc. > suvar Pañcāla YV
* tanacmi > tanakmi, etc. Prācya (Eastern dialect)
Further diffusion of early Kuru innovations:
* purovasu- (Pañcāla)
* palāyate, etc. (Pañcāla)
Retentions:
* [ ch/śch ] retained (Kuru area: E. Panjab/W. Uttar Pradesh),
later > [ cch ]
Sandhi Innovations::
* Sandhi -ān V- > aṃ V- (part of Kuru area)
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