VOWEL SANDHI
A vowel at the end of a word interacts (and often merges) with a following vowel, but remains the same when a consonant follows.
The simplest kind of sandhi occurs in the combination of a word-final vowel followed by a word-initial consonant: here, nothing happens.
Yet when a word-final vowel is followed by a word-initial vowel, they often link up and eradicate any gap between them; thus they are also combined in writing. This process takes one of two possible shapes. When two identical vowels (whether long or short) meet, they merge into one long vowel:
a or ā + a or ā –› ā
i or ī + i or ī –› ī
u or ū + u or ū –› ū
ṛ or ṝ + ṛ or ṝ –› ṝ
सेना आगच्छति –› सेनागच्छति ‘The army is coming.’
कन्या गच्छति इति वदति –› कन्या गच्छतीति वदति ‘“The girl is going”, he says.’
When final -a/-ā encounters a different vowel, a/ā + i/ī gives e (<*ai), a/ā + e (<*ai) gives ai (<*āi), and so on. (On e < *ai etc. –› Chapter 2.)
सेना तत्र इति वदति –› सेना तत्रेति वदति ‘There (is) the army’, he says.
When final -i/-ī, -u/-ū or -ṛ/-ṝ encounter a different vowel, they turn into their non-vocalic (glide) form (-y, -v and -r, respectively; –› Chapter 2 on semivowels/glides) and are thus combined in writing with whatever follows:
इति उक्त्वा –› इत्युक्त्वा ‘having spoken thus’
The same applies to the -u at the end of final -au (remember that au originally was *āu; before another vowel, it thus appears as -āv, not as +-av):
कुमारौ आगच्छतः –› कुमारावागच्छतः ‘The two young men are coming.’
The other complex vowels, however, display different behaviour: remembering that underlying e, ai and o are *ai, *āi and *au, we might expect the final i and u to turn into y and v, respectively, as they do elsewhere. Instead, these final sounds are simply lost, leaving a gap between the two words in question:
वने आश्रमः अभवत् –› वन आश्रमो ऽभवत् ‘In the forest, there was a hermitage.’
The one exception to this: after final -e and -o, initial a- drops out, and -e and -o remain unchanged.
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