Page:Sanskrit Grammar by Whitney p1.djvu/62

  In this work, the accent of each word and form will in general be marked, so far as there is authority determining its place and character. Where specific words and forms are quoted, they will only be so far accentuated as they are found with accent in accentuated texts.

The words in Sanskrit, as in the other languages related with it, are in great part analysable into roots, suffixes of derivation, and endings of inflection, these last being added mostly to stems containing suffixes, but also sometimes directly to roots.

There are, of course, a certain number of uninflected words—indeclinables, particles; and also not a few that are incapable of analysis.

The Sanskrit, indeed, possesses an exceptionally analysable character; its formative processes are more regular and transparent than those of any other Indo-European tongue. Hence the prevailing method of the Hindu native science of grammar, which sets up a certain body of roots, and prescribes the processes by which these may be made stems and words, giving the various added elements, and laying down the rules by which their combination is effected. And the same general method is, for like reasons, followed also by European grammarians.

The euphonic laws, accordingly, which govern the combination of suffix or of ending with root or stem, possess a high practical importance, and require to be laid down in preparation for the topics of declension and conjugation.

Moreover, the formation of compounds, by joining two or more simple stems, is extremely frequent in Sanskrit; and this kind of combination has its own peculiar euphonic rules. And once more, in the form of the language as handed down to us by its literature, the words composing a sentence or paragraph are adapted to and combined with one another by nearly the same rules which govern the making of compounds; so that it is impossible to take apart and understand a Sanskrit sentence without knowing those rules. Hence