Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/255



599. present-system, or system of forms coming from the present-stem, is composed (as was pointed out above) of a present indicative tense, together with a subjunctive (mostly lost in the classical language), an optative, an imperative, and a participle, and also a past tense, an augment-preterit, to which we give (by analogy with the Greek) the name of imperfect.

a. These forms often go in Sanskrit grammars by the name of "special tenses", while the other tense-systems are styled "general tenses" — as if the former were made from a special tense-stem or modified root, while the latter came, all alike, from the root itself. There is no reason why such a distinction and nomenclature should be retained; since, on the one hand, the "special tenses" come in one set of verbs directly from the root, and, on the other hand, the other tense-systems are mostly made from stems — and, in the case of the aorist, from stems having a variety of form comparable with that of present-stems.

600. Practically, the present-system is the most prominent and important part of the whole conjugation, since, from the earliest period of the language, its forms are very much more frequent than those of all the other systems together.

a. Thus, in the Veda, the occurrences of personal forms of this system are to those of all others about as three to one; in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, as five to one; in the Hitopadeça, as six to one; in the Çakuntalā, as eight to one; in Manu, as thirty to one.

601. And, as there is also great variety in the manner in which different roots form their present-stem, this, as being their most conspicuous difference, is made the basis of their principal classification; and a verb is said to be of this or of that conjugation, or class, according to the way in which its present-stem is made and inflected.