Page:Vedic Grammar.djvu/328

 318 I. ALLGEMEINES UND SPRACHE. 4. VEDIC GRAMMAR. only when the root ends in a vowel, but -āna¹ when it ends in a consonant; thus pu-nihi 'purify', but as-āna 'eat'. 2 b. The ending -tät occurs some twenty times in the RV. When strong and weak stem are distinguished, it is added to the latter; e. g. vit-tất 'thou shalt regard', dhat-tat 'thou shalt place', krnu-tāt 'thou shalt make', punī-tāt 'thou shalt purify', etc. Its use is almost restricted to the 2. sing. It is, however, once 3 found in the RV. and once in the TS. in the sense of the 3. sing., once as 2. du. in the RV., once as 2. pl. in the TS., and once as 1. sing. in AV.4. It appears to have the value of a future imperative, ex- pressing an injunction to be carried out at a time subsequent to the present. It may originally have been identical with the abl. tad 'after that', 'then'; krnu-tat would thus have meant 'do (it) then's. I. The Present System. 419. This group consists of a present indicative together with a sub- junctive, an injunctive, an optative, an imperative, and participles, besides a past augmented tense called the imperfect because formed analogously to the Greek tense. This is the most important system, as its forms are about three times as common as those of the three other systems taken together 6. Hence roots are generally classified according to the manner in which their stems are formed in the present system. Here two distinct conjugations may be conveniently distinguished. The first or a- conjugation, all the stems in which end in -a, retains the stem unaltered (like the a- declension) in every tense, mood, and parti- ciple, accenting the same syllable throughout the present indicative, its moods and participles, as well as the unaugmented imperfect. The secondary con- jugations in -a (desideratives, intensives, causatives, denominatives) as well as the future, follow this conjugation in their inflexion. The second or graded conjugation is characterized by shift of accent between stem and ending, accompanied by vowel gradation. Minor differences consist in the loss of n in the 3. pl. middle, in the addition of another suffix (-āna instead of -mana) in the middle participle, in the employment of an ending in the 2. sing. impv. act., and in vowel gradation, with shift of accent, in the modal suffix of the optative. a. The first or a conjugation. 420. The special characteristics of this conjugation are: 1. The -a of the stem is lengthened before the endings of the 1. du. and pl. which begin with v and m; e. g. jayāmasi 'we conquer'; while the initial a of the endings of the 3. pl. -anti, -ante, -an, -anta, is dropped; e. g. bhára-nti 'they bear'. 2. The optative sign is throughout -7, which combines with the -a of the present stem to e; e. g. bháves. 3. The 2. sing. impv. act. has no ending except the comparatively few instances (about sixteen) in which -tät is added. 1 On the origin of this peculiar imperative form cp. BRUGMANN, KG. 839, 5. 2 See DELBRÜCK, Verbum 38. 3 Op. cit. 77; WHITNEY 571, b. AVERY, however (225, bottom), states that it occurs 5 times in the RV. as a 3. sing. 4 WHITNEY, loc. cit. 5 BRUGMANN, KG. 732. 6 WHITNEY 600, a. 7 But when the augment was added, it received the accent just like the verbal pre- position in a principal sentence (the verb itself remaining unaccented). 8 Also aorist stems ending in -a. 5