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 178 I. ALLGEMEINES UND SPRACHE. 4. VEDIC GRAMMAR. one' from the phrase kuvít sá is it he?'. This type is more commonly based on phrases used by people about themselves; thus áham-sana (voc.) 'rapa- cious', that is, one who says ahám saneyam (dhánāni) 'may I obtain (wealth)'; aham-pūrvá- ‘eager to be first', that is, one who says ahám púrvaḥ (syām) 'I (should be) first'; kim-tvá- (VS.) 'asking garrulously' that is, one who con- tinually says 'what (are) you (doing)?'. VI. DECLENSION. BENFEY, Vollständige Grammatik 707-780. WHITNEY, Grammar 261-526. 294. General character.- Declension means the inflexion of nominal stems by means of endings which express the various relations represented by what are called cases. The stems belonging to the sphere of declension are most conveniently divided, owing to difference of meaning, form, and use, into nouns, pronouns, and numerals. Fronouns have to be treated separately because they have certain peculiarities of inflexion, besides to some extent lacking the distinction of gender. Numerals again show other pecu- liarities of form as well as partial lack of gender. Nouns are divided into substantives as names of things and adjectives as names of attributes. But as no definite line of demarcation can be drawn between substantive and adjective in any of the classes of declension in the Vedic language, these two categories are nowhere treated separately in the present work. I. Nouns. LANMAN, Noun-inflection in the Veda, JAOS. vol. x (1880), p. 325-600. 295. Owing to considerable divergencies of inflexion, nominal stems are best grouped in the two main divisions of consonant and vowel de- clension. Stems ending. in semivowels form a transition from the former to the latter. The stems contained in the two main classes have further to be sub-divided, owing to difference of derivation and, in part, consequent variety of inflexion, into radical and derivative stems. a. Like other Aryan tongues, the Vedic language distinguishes in declen- sion the three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. It also distinguishes three numbers, the singular, dual, and plural, the dual being in full and regular use b. There are eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, all in regular and unrestricted use. The same ending, however, is to a limited extent employed to express the sense of two and sometimes of three cases. Thus the eight cases of the dual have among them only three endings; in the plural the single ending -bhyas does duty for both dative and ablative; while in the singular the same ending -as appears for both ablative and genitive in all but the a-declension. c. The normal endings of cases are the following: Singular: nom. in. f. -s, n. none; voc. of all genders, none; acc. m. f. -am, n. none; inst. -ā, dat. -e, abl. gen. -as, loc. -i. Dual: nom. voc. acc. m. f. -ā, -au, n. -ī, inst. dat. abl. -bhyām, gen. loc. -os. Plural: nom. voc. acc. m. f. -as, neut. -i; inst. -bhis, dat. abl. -bhyas, gen. -ām, loc. -su. ¹ RV. VIII. 619; cp. ahám sánā V. 75². a But while the employment of the dual is generally strict, the plural is often used instead of the dual of natural pairs in the 'hieratic' parts of the RV.; see BLOOM- FIELD, Johns Hopkins University Circular for 1905, p. 18 f., OLIPHANT, ibid. p. 22-31.