Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/153

 349. Monosyllabic stems. Before the endings beginning with vowels, final is changed to  and  to ; while final  is dropped altogether, except in the strong cases, and in the acc. pl., which is like the nominative (according to the grammarians, is lost here also: no instances of the occurrence of such a form appear to be quotable). Stems in and  are in the later language allowed to take optionally the fuller endings, ,  in the singular (dat., abl.-gen., loc.); but no such forms are ever met with in the Veda (except  [?], RV., once). Before of gen. pl.,  may or may not be inserted; in the Veda it is regularly inserted, with a single exception (, once). The vocative is like the nominative in the singular as well as the other numbers; but instances of its occurrence in uncompounded stems are not found in the Veda, and must be extremely rare everywhere. The earlier Vedic dual ending is instead of.

350. To the - and -stems the rules for monosyllabic accent apply: the accent is thrown forward upon the endings in all the weak cases except the accus. pl., which is like the nom. But the -stems appear (the instances are extremely few) to keep the accent upon the stem throughout.

351. Examples of declension. As models of monosyllabic inflection we may take जा f. progeny; धी  f. thought; and भू  f. earth.

a. The first of these is rather arbitrarily extended from the four cases which actually occur; of the loc. sing. and gen.-loc. du., no Vedic examples from -stems are found.