Ivan Andrijanić, Department of Indology and Far Eastern Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Hindī numerals in historical and comparative perspective

One of the problems that foreign students face while learning Hindī are numerals. For usual European classical and modern languages one has to learn by heart numerals from one to ten or twenty. Numerals from one to ten are usually based on unrelated stems, while eleven to twenty are in most languages more or less transparently formed on the basis of stems from one to ten. However, the numerals from twenty-one to ninety-nine are usually formed regularly according to some recognizable pattern and students only have to master the rule. Such is the case even with Sanskrit, but not with Hindī (and other New Indo-Aryan languages) where all numerals from one to hundred have to be memorized separately. So for instance 24 in English is formed regularly from twenty + four, 25 from twenty + five. In Sanskrit they are formed from catur (4) + viṃśati (20) and pañca (5) + viṃśati. In Hindī 24 is caubīs, where numeral cār (4) is not recognizable; even more with 25 pacīs where pā̃c (5) and bīs (20) cannot be separated. This means that numerals caubīs (24) and pacīs (25) do not appear at first sight as a part of regular succession. The reason for this seemingly irregular number succession is that numerals in Hindī are not formed by pattern, but by sound change from the Sanskrit original through Middle Indo-Aryan (Prakrit) forms. Caubīs is derived from Skt. caturviṃśati (through Prakrit forms like catubbīsam) and pacīs from pañcaviṃśati (through Pāli pañcavīsati, paññavīsati etc.). This presentation will explore a) sound change that affected numerals in different stages of language development, (e.g. how come that caubīs retained Skt. –v-, while it disappeared in pacīs) and b) analogical formations that affected many numerals in a rather unpredictable way. The presentation will also try to explore the direction and range of analogical change that affected the succession of numerals.