Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/365

 adjective (592), is on the noun itself; and, unlike all the true verbal forms, the combination retains its accent everywhere even in an independent clause: thus, (ÇB.) then I shall be out of danger (where, if used, would be accentless). Whether in a dependent clause the auxiliary verb would take an accent (595), and whether, if so, at the expense of the accent of the noun (as in the case of a preposition compounded with a verb-form: 1083 b), we are without the means of determining.

940. In the Veda, the nomina agentis in or, like various other derivative nouns (271), but with especial frequency, are used in participial construction, governing the accusative if they come from roots whose verbal forms do so (1182). Often, also, they are used predicatively, with or without accompanying copula; yet without any implication of time; they are not the beginnings, but only the forerunners, of a new tense-formation. Generally, when they have a participial value, the root-syllable (or a prefix preceding it) has the accent. The tense-use begins, but rather sparingly, in the Brāhmaṇas (from which about thirty forms are quotable); and it grows more common later, though the periphrastic future is nowhere nearly so frequent as the -future (it is quotable later from about thirty additional roots).

947. a. A few isolated attempts are made in the Brāhmaṇas to form by analogy middle persons to this future, with endings corresponding after the usual fashion to those of the active persons. Thus, TS. has once I will apply (standing related to  as, for example,  to ); ÇB. has thou shalt lie (similarly related to ); and TB. has  we will make offering. But in TA. is found (i. 11) as 1st sing., showing a phonetic correspondence of a problematic character, not elsewhere met with in the language.

b. On the basis of such tentative formations as these, the native grammarians set up a complete middle inflection for the periphrastic future, as follows:

c. Only a single example of such a middle has been brought to light in the later language, namely (the causative) (Nāiṣ.).

948. As the -future is the commoner, so also it is the one more indefinitely used. It expresses in general what is going to take place at some time to come — but often, as in other languages, adding on the one hand an implication of will or intention, or on the other hand that of promise or threatening.