about
how to find out the class of a verb
about
verb classes
unchanging has neither
non-third person
Which roots get
replacing with
soft
About the
auxiliary roots
About accents.
rules that delete root nasal
the auxiliary
prohibition
Metri causa means "to make the verse fit".
epics have oddities.
about hidden words
Accent rules are only applied when reciting the veda.
Extralong is a vowel longer than a long.
No
about
about
About
formation of
Spelling of
About hangers.
types of affixes
about
rules that delete the calling
MCM, sandhi of
sandhi of true r
about meaning the doer or not meaning the doer
Accurate translation of
replace with
changes before benedictive
different kinds of nothing
There are two groups of vibhakti affixes --
The prAgdizIya affixes are vibhakti affixes, by rule prAgdizovibhaktiH
The sup and tiG affixes are vibhakti too, by rule vibhaktizca.
Several rules work on vibhakti affixes, such as aSTana::A, tyadAdInAmaH, navibhaktautusmAH.
To find out the class of a ROOT, look the root up in a dictionary.
For instance, when you type
Do NOT type
To find out the class number of a verb, type it into inria reader.
If you typed a laT, laG, loT, hard liG that means the doer (for instance
If you type some other tense, for instance
You may also type the verb into auroville.
And, if you can read devanAgarI, you may also type the verb into hyderabad's morphological analyzer tool.
The pronoun yad- means "the one that, the one which, the one who, who, he who". As in --
When yad- agrees with
When the horse is given second ending by the verb, the yad- gets second too --
even where there is no horse word in the sentence --
in that example yad- got to be masculine because the speaker is thinking of a horse. If the speaker is thinking of a mare the yad- gets feminine gender --
and same thing if the mare is mentioned --
When the yad- has other endings, we have to be careful to translate the ending in front of the "which", never in front of "the one". As in --
For English speakers, the yad- pronouns are hard to get used to. The important thing about learning them is that you should never try to translate them until after you are comfortable with the several forms of the tad- idam- kim- pronouns. To help with that, I made this drilling gadget --
masculine singular pronouns drill
Hope it works.
The roots listed in the dhAtupATha are divided into ten goups called verb classes. These are the numbers of the ten verb classes, the affix that their roots get, the name of the class, and the rule that adds the affix --
[1] zap zapclass kartarizap
[2] luk lukclass adiprabhRtibhyazzapaH
[3] zlu zluclass juhotyAdibhyazzluH
[4] zyan zyanclass divAdibhyazzyan
[5] znu znuclass svAdibhyazznuH
[6] za zaclass tudAdibhyazza
[7] znam znamclass rudhAdibhyazznam
[9] znA znAclass kryAdibhyazznA
These ten affixes are called vikaraNa affixes by grammarians other than
Rules one to nine above only work when the root is right before a hard doer affix. Rule ten, however, ALWAYS adds Nic, no matter what is afterwards. If what is afterwards is a hard doer affix, the Nic becomes
The lukclass roots do not get luk affix; I use the word luk in the list to mean that they get no affix at all.
When you type
See also how to find out the class of a verb .
"
When I say " noun", I mean
Some examples of nouns, with the sup they have. What is before the sup is either a nounbase, or a nounbase with a feminine affix added at the end.
Notice that you cannot trust the translation of a sentence to know if something is a noun or not. In
Whatever has a tiG at the end is a verb (in Sanskrit:
as + laG →
Please remember that whatever "feels" verbish because it translates into an English verb won't be a verb if it does not have a tiG at the end. So there is not a single verb here --
even though three of the words have a verb root inside and mean an action.
To test a word for verbhood, drop it into inria. Inria will paint it red and tell you which tiG it has. Well, unless it's an Am'' verb like
An old jingle goes,
Sanskrit words can be divided in three groups, that inria paints blue, red and pink --
blue -- nouns OR
red -- verbs OR
pink -- unchanging OR
Blue are nouns, made by adding a sup ( noun ending) after a nounbase. We may add different sup to the same nounbase.
Red are verbs, made by adding a tiG ( verb ending) after a root. We may add different tiG to the same root.
Everything else is pink -- unchanging.
Pinks either don't get a sup tiG at all, or always get the same sup. So they always look the same.
The liT tense has been seldom used since the epics. And even in the epics, only the third person endings are found -- Nal atus us ez AtAm irec.
As all those start with vowels, they never get iT. Which means you don't need to pay much attention to the rules, such as kR;sR;bhR;vR;stu;dru;sru;zru and others, that add iT to the valAdi liT (namely thal va ma se''' dhve''' vahe''' mahe'''),
If we take seriously the
And similarly, you can use the first person liT only when you talk about something that you don't remember having done or claim to not have done --
Frankly -- If you are going to use a first or second person liT, do not worry about the
These are the rules that turn
Rules kAs;pratyayAdAmamantreliTi ff
explain which roots get Am'' instead of liTidhA.
Rule AmaH
deletes the liT affix.
adds that affix to an auxiliary then glues them after the Am''.
And rule Ampratyaya clarifies that two of the auxiliaries never get bent affixes.
Rules kAspra ff explain exactly which roots get Am'' before liT. But summarizing those rules here can do no harm.
The rule-of thumb is that roots with one vowel get liTidhA, like
and the rest get Am'', like
(In those examples, the Asa is added after Am'' by rule kRJcA).
Now the exceptions to the general rule.
(1) UrNu has two vowels, but gets no Am'' --
(2)
(3) So do the one-vowelers that start with a heavy vowel that is not
(4) And these roots make their liT both ways --
Replacing with guNa works like this:
change
change
change
change
Replacing with vRddhi works like this:
change
change
change
change
change
There are many rules in the grammar dealing with the soft liG, starting at liGAziSi, and they are quite complicated.
Do not panic about that. You don't need to know much about those rules, as the soft liG, nowadays, is used once in a blue moon when it is flat, and never when it is bent. It was apparently used in vedic times, and in
The soft liG may be used only to express wishes. But when you need to express wishes, you should really use the hard liG or the loT instead.
Short explanation: the uNAdi affixes are affixes that are not mentioned in the
Now the long explanation.
Many Sanskrit nounbases are formed by adding kRt affixes after roots. For instance,
Most of the affixes mentioned in the rules are quite useful, in the sense that what they can help to explain the meanings of many words. For instance, rule NvultRcau tells us that all roots can get Nvul, from which we deduce that we may say
Others are less useful, like ktin, that is added only to some roots, or snaJ, that is added to
The uNAdi affixes are affixes invented by other grammarians before and after
As you can use a dictionary to check that
The auxiliary roots are kR, bhU and as.
Sometimes they are used to make auxiliary verbs such as
These verbs are called auxiliary verbs when they are used as if they were affixes. This only happens after Am'' and cvi.
Example after
Example after
The forms made from as + liT, such as
According to
(1) acute, or higher than normal
(2) grave, or normal
(3) falling, that starts at acute and goes down to normal.
Most vowels are grave. One vowel of each word is acute. The grave that comes right after an acute vowel is replaced with a falling.
According to the saying
This website assumes that you are not interested in learning to chant the veda. Just ignore all accent rules and pitch your Sanskrit however you like, or not at all.
Chapter 6.2 only has accent rules. I have translated one, namely In a longhorn , the former keeps its accent , just because the legend of
An example. The affixes tavya and tavyat have the same meaning but different accent, because of the label
Rule that erases the final nasal of a root --
anudAttopadeza (makes
Rules that erase the nexttolast nasal of a halanta root, and exceptions --
64023 znAnnalopaH after znam
64024 an-iditAM hala:: upadhAyAH kGiti before kGit
64025 daMza;saJja;svaJjAM zapi before zap
64027 ghaJi ca bhAva-karaNayoH
By asterbhUH, the root as turns into bhU before liT, so that as + liT jhi makes
Yet this only happens when as + liT is used as an ordinary verb. When it is an auxiliary, that is to say, when it is added after Am'', it stays as, and then we get --
As in --
The particle mAG is used to forbid or dissuade. It can be used with a loT, where
yet instead of the loT, the luG can be used. This luG will not get aT AT, because of namAGyoge --
if there is both mAG and sma, the laG can be used, again with namAGyoge --
By alaGkhalvoH, when the sense is "stop doing", we can use
We can also use a tumun, or an action noun with TA --
"Metri causa" (say that as
This expression is used when Latin and Ancient Greek poets break some grammar rules to make the verse fit.
Latinists take good note: in the Sanskrit tradition, good poets are supposed to never breach
Yet, the epics appear to be older than
"wealth comes from
"
According to good grammar,
Scholiasts of the epics will excuse ungrammaticalities like
Coulson says that the makers of the epics composed Sanskrit "intuitively" with no knowledge of
The word ArSam means "belonging to the old language of the
Example. Suppose a zloka line has 17 vowels, such as
which boils down to saying "the extra syllable is not a typo".
Commentators do not always use that word. For instance, this line is a clear violation of rule samAse '-naJ-pUrve ktvo lyap --
But the commentary might just have
Suppose I ask "where did the squirrel go?" and I say "under the tree". If I say that, maybe my English grammar is not very good, but you will understand that I mean "the squirrel went under the tree", "the squirrel is under the tree", or "look under the tree".
If you are asked "did John catch the squirrel", you won't say "John caught the squirrel". The normal thing to do is skipping the words that will be easily understood even if missing. So, you might answer "he caught it", or "Paul caught it", or "he caught the moose", or just "yes".
English grammar is very picky about what happens when a word is hidden. I'm told that "under the tree" is bad grammar, and I must say "it's under the tree" -- replacing "squirrel" with "it". Sanskrit grammar, however, is not so picky. Same as in Japanese grammar, if a word is necessary you say it, and otherwise just don't say it. If you say this --
everybody will understand that you mean "by
The
In those rules, the word
It is abundantly clear that
The extralong vowels, also called
Ther come in two flavours.
First, the extralong vowels of the veda -- some vowels must be chanted with a duration of three mAtrA. You know which because they are written as a long vowel, but with a figure 3 after them.
And then, those mentioned by
Some rules that mention the extralong --
When you call someone from far away, rule dUrAddhUte says, you may make the last vowel last more than a long.
Rule kSiyA says that you can use sometimes an extralong when you are angry at rudeness, blessing someone, or giving several commands.
The first half of a compound is always a word (by supodhA). Now, in some compounds, like
There are dozens of rules allowing exceptions to the same-word like this one, but you don't need to worry about them much, because they usually happen in compounds, such as
These changes happen because fluent speakers will automatically apply raSA to whatever "feels" as if it were a single word. And expressions feel like a single word when they are used a often. So
As words evolve from a compound to a commonly used word, there is no way to tell exactly when a compound will start to feel like a single word. The
raSA will never change the
It will only work before vowel and funny. So it changes
Then rule 83024 nazcA works and turns
Now, rule 84002 aTkupvA cannot work, because it works on
Then, rule 84058 anusvA turns M into
And now, because of cantgoback, it is too late for 84002 to work even though
The affix
The kta nounbases can be used either as verblikes, meaning "was led, was heard, was thrown" --
or as adjectives, meaning "led, heard, thrown" --
In the feminine, kta gets Ap, by ajAdyataSTAp --
The affix
(In these three examples, kGitica prevented puganta or hardsoft.)
The ktavatu nounbases are almost always used as verblikes --
They can be used as adjetives too, but that's uncommon.
In the feminine, they get GI, by ugitazca --
Some rules have unexpected things, and it is suspected that
Example. According to rule GamohrasvA, we have to double wordfinal
Yet, in sutra iko yaN aci, we have a wordfinal
One way to explain that would be saying that
Yet
So if it is not a bug, it must be a feature. We must conclude that
In this case, the best guess of the experts is that
According to this teaching, you may, if you want, chant sUtra ikoyaNaci as
The lRG tense gets sya, as if it were lRT.
It also gets luGlaG itazca tasthas nityaGGitaH, as if it were laG.
Example --
As in --
which is not the same as the list given by the kAzikA two millenia earlier. So, I'd say that you may safely ignore those lists and just guess there's a yak' when you hear anything like
Rule aNuditsa teaches that the abbreviations ku, cu, Tu, tu, pu stand for these five groups of letters ---
ku =
cu =
Tu =
tu =
pu =
All grammarians after
respectively. So they say
Example. The kAzikA commentary under rule coHkuH "replace cu with ku" explains --
instead of saying
Some short words, like ca vA eva iva, are called hangers, because they are always attached after another word. Therefore the expressions --
are always pronounced as if they were single words. Even though they are made of a normal word plus a hanger.
You may write a space before the hanger --
In grammars, hangers are called "enclitics", which is Ancient Greek for "leaners".
Rule anudAttaM sarvam a-pAd'-Adau teaches that hangers cannot start a sentence, verse or half-verse -- they are always hanging after something else.
Some groups of afixes --
sup noun endings -- added after nounbases. They make nouns. Described under GyApprA.
kRt affixes -- added after roots. They make nounbases. Described under kRdatiG
tenses -- added after roots. They make verbs.
tiG verb endings -- these replace tenses.
taddhita affixes -- added after nouns. They make nounbases. Described under taddhitAH.
samAsAnta affixes -- added after a compound.
sanAdi affixes.
Some of these are added after a noun to make a root --
and the rest are added after a root to make another root --
The affix
tarap is much more common that iSThan, but iSThan appears after some very common nounbases.
Example of iSThan --
See also priya;sthira.
The
After consonants, Ap, GI by halGyA and eGhrasvAt
After eG and short by eGhrasvAt
After feminine
Therefore, the
Those nounbases are few and far between. They are the ones that end in diphthongs, and the ones that end in a rootnoun from a root that ends in
Examples:
The nounbase
and
The words that end in
Turn
Turn
Lose the
The words that end in
Turn
Other words that end in
Turn
All words that end in
Turn
Turn
Turn
Turn
Turn
The words that end in true r are very few, and most of the time they look as if they ended in
The exceptions are --
before
before vowels or other haz,
Some words built from roots can affect the words that mean the doer or the object of that root, or be affected by them. Those words fall in two groups --
(1) verbs. Those built by adding a tense after a root.
Examples:
(2) verblikes. Those build by adding certain affixes (such as kRtya, niSThA, sat...) after a root, getting a nounbase.
Examples:
These can also be divided in two groups: those that mean the doer, called
(A) The following mean the doer --
(B) The following mean the object --
(C) The following mean nothing --
HOW TO USE
The words in group (A) can come from any root. They take different endings depending on their doer. Their object takes second.
Examples with
Examples with
The words in group (B) come from objectful roots. They take different endings depending on their object. Their doer takes third.
Examples with
Examples with
The words in group (C) come from objectless roots. They take always ta if they are verbs, or su if they are nouns. Their doer takes third.
Examples with
Examples with
Elsewhere, I translated nazchavya as " wordfinal
" ( Wordfinal)
You will meet the three differences between the accurate rule and the wrong rule once in a blue moon. They are --
(1)
Usually, this makes no difference, because, most of the time, ru is going to turn into
Which is the same thing as if nazchavya had replaced
You will hear this
(2) The
(3) The rule won't work before
This happens because the rule inherits
When a rule says that something must be replaced with guNa, then --
https://archive.org/details/highersanskritgr00kaleuoft/page/357/mode/1up?view=theater
P581 final i u lengthen jIyAt
R after cluster and of
other final R to ri kriyAt
final
583 samprasaraNa
zAs to zis
584 most roots drop penultimate nasal srasyAt
P585 P591c some
dIya gIya
but jJAya dhyAya
same as changes before yak
https://archive.org/details/highersanskritgr00kaleuoft/page/360/mode/1up?view=theater
P591b before yak , roots undergo the same changes as before the flat terminations of the benedictive
The rules never say "delete" or "erase". Instead of "delete
There are different kinds of nothing.
Replacing something with lopa deletes one letter. When rule saMyogAnta commands "replace
luk is a more destructive sort of nothing. When SaDbhyoluk teaches "replace zas with luk", that turns the whole zas into nothingness. So
Worse still. If an affix had made its stem change letters, luking that affix will undo those changes. Example. Adding os after
Many rules replace with luk, such as svamor, ciNoluk, yaGocica.
Not so. When rule karmaNidvi adds am after the nounbase