Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/234

 the subjunctive. In the perfect, the middle third person has, like the active, the same ending with the first, namely simply; and in the older language, the third person present also often loses the distinctive part of its termination, and comes to coincide in form with the first (and MS. has  for ). To this perhaps corresponds, as secondary, the  of the aorist 3d pers. passive (842 ff.). The imperative has (or, in the Veda, rarely ) for its ending.

546. Dual: First person. Both in active and in middle, the dual first person is in all its varieties precisely like the corresponding plural, only with substitution of for the  of the latter: thus,  (no  has been found to occur),, , ,. The person is, of course, of comparatively rare use, and from the Veda no form in, even, is quotable.

547. Second and Third persons. a. In the active, the primary ending of the second person is, and that of the third is ; and this relation of to  appears also in the perfect, and runs through the whole series of middle endings. The perfect endings are primary, but have instead of  as vowel; and an  has become so persistently prefixed that their forms have to be reckoned as  and. The secondary endings exhibit no definable relation to the primary in these two persons; they are and ; and they are used in the imperative as well.

b. In the middle, a long — which, however, with the final  of -stems becomes  — has become prefixed to all dual endings of the second and third persons, so as to form an inseparable part of them ( AV., and  ÇB., are isolated anomalies). The primary endings, present and perfect, are and ; the secondary (and imperative) are  and  (or, with stem-final,  etc.).

c. The Rig-Veda has a very few forms in and, apparently from  and  with subjunctive strengthening (they are all detailed below: see 615, 701, 737, 752, 836, 1008, 1043).

548. Plural: First person. a. The earliest form of the active ending is, which in the oldest language is more frequent than the briefer (in RV., as five to one; in AV., however, only as three to four). In the classical Sanskrit, is the exclusive primary ending; but the secondary abbreviated  belongs also to the perfect and the subjunctive (imperative). In the Veda, often becomes  (248 c), especially in the perfect.

b. The primary middle ending is. This is lightened in the secondary form to ; and, on the other hand, it is regularly (in the Veda, not invariably) strengthened to in the subjunctive (imperative).

549. Second person. a. The active primary ending is. The secondary, also imperative, ending is (in the Veda,  only