Lesson 8: Asmat Śabdāḥ

In practice, mama kṛte ("for the sake of me") is more commonly used than the dative mahyam — e.g. mama kṛte phalaṁ ānayati, "[Someone] brings a fruit for me."

Jihvāmūlīya and Upadhmānīya: these are two context-dependent pronunciations of the visarga (ḥ), used when a word ending in ḥ is followed by a word starting with a voiceless velar or labial consonant. In writing, the visarga is still just written as ḥ; these describe how it's actually pronounced in that context, not a different letter.

• Jihvāmūlīya ("produced at the root of the tongue"): how ḥ is pronounced before ka or kha. It shifts to a voiceless velar sound, matching the place of articulation of the following guttural.
• Upadhmānīya ("breathed out/blown upon"): how ḥ is pronounced before pa or pha. It shifts to a voiceless bilabial sound, matching the following labial.

In asmābhiḥ kṛtam, the ḥ before k is pronounced as jihvāmūlīya rather than a plain visarga.

Visarga Sandhi: more generally, the visarga (ḥ) changes depending on the sound that follows it.

• Before ka, kha, pa, or pha: it becomes jihvāmūlīya or upadhmānīya (see above).
• Before ca or cha: it becomes ś. Before ṭa or ṭha: it becomes ṣ. Before ta or tha: it becomes s.
• Before a voiced sound (a vowel, a voiced consonant, or y/v/r/l/h): if the visarga is preceded by a, it becomes o (e.g. rāmaḥ gacchati → rāmo gacchati); if preceded by ā, it simply drops (e.g. devāḥ vasanti → devā vasanti); if preceded by any other vowel, it becomes r (e.g. hariḥ gacchati → harir gacchati).
• Before ś, ṣ, or s: it generally stays as ḥ.
• At the end of a sentence, or before a pause: it stays as ḥ.