SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The thesis, entitled as above, is divided into ten chapters dealing with the order of words mainly in Sanskrit Prose. In order to cover a long period of development, passages in prose have been selected from the (1) Aitareya Brahmana, (2) Mahabharata, (3) Rook and Pillar edicts of Asoka, (4) Majjhi Nikaya and (5) Da?akumaracarita and the word-order analysed. In the first chapter, an account is given of notices on the question of word-order in the works on the orthodox systems of Sanskrit grammar. Poetics and Logic and also of what has already been done regarding the study of word-order in Sanskrit. In each of the subsequent chapters the position of a particular syntactica element is traced in all the texts selected till a considerable number has been collected. The general tendency of the position of the particular element in each of the works has been established by figures showing the frequency of its occurrence in that position. The number of the cases of exceptions has been determined and accounted for as far as possible. It has been shown, wherever it is so, how a particular order was mostly used in one period and how a different order was favoured in another till gradually it became more or less fixed. Reference has occasionally been made to some of the modern Indo-Aryan languages where these seem to show an order strikingly similar to or different from the one with which we are familiar in the several texts examined for the present study.