Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/358

 interpretation implying either sense; and evident aorist-forms are sometimes used narratively, while imperfect-forms are also occasionally employed in the aorist sense.

930. The boundary between what has just been and what is is an evanescent one, and is sometimes overstepped, so that an aorist appears where a present might stand, or was even rather to be expected. Thus: (AB. i. 29. 7) "be ye comfortable seats for our Indu", he says; Indu is king Soma; by this means he has made them (instead of makes them) suitable for king Soma to sit upon;  (MS. iv. 3. 10) the waters are Varuna's; in that he bepours him with waters, he has made him Varuna;  (MS. iii. 2. 6) he smears with five; fivefold is the offering; as great as is the offering, of it he has [thereby] taken hold; then, as great as is the offering, from it he smites away the demons. This idiom is met with in all the Brāhmaṇas; but it is especially frequent in the MS.

931. verb has two futures, of very different age and character. The one has for tense-sign a sibilant followed by य, and is an inheritance from the time of Indo-European unity. The other is a periphrastic formation, made by appending an auxiliary verb to a derivative noun of agency, and it is a recent addition to the verb-system; its beginnings only are met with in the earliest language. The former may be called the -future (or the old future, or simply the future); the latter may be distinguished as the periphrastic future.