Page:Vedic Grammar.djvu/375

 VII. VERB. AORIST SYSTEM. 365 Pl. 3. ácakriran, ajagmiran, ápeciran (√pac-, AV.); avavṛtran; ásasygram¹. - Transfer forms according to the a- conjugation: átitvisanta, ádadr hanta, ádadrmhanta (TS. IV. 6. 24), ávāvasanta (vas bellow'); cakrpánta, dádhṛṣanta (AV.), vāvasanta (väs- 'bellow'). - With ending -ranta: avavṛtranta. Periphrastic Perfect. 496. This formation made with the reduplicated perfect of ky- ‘make’ which governs the acc. of a fem. substantive in a derived from a secondary (causative) verbal stem, is found only once in the Mantra portion of the Vedas: gamayám cakāra (AV. xvIII. 227) he caused to go' (lit. 'he made a causing to go'). In the Brāhmaṇa portions of the Samhitas (TS. MS. K.), such periphrastic forms (made even with an aorist) are occasionally met with.² III. The Aorist System. 497. The aorist is of frequent occurrence in the Vedas, being made from about 450 roots. An augmented tense taking the secondary endings and forming moods and participles, it is distinguished from the imperfect by lack of a corresponding present3 (e. g. 3. sing. aor. á-kar, 3. sing. imp. á-kṛnot, 3. sing. pres. krnóti) and by difference of meaning (ákar ‘he has done', ákṛnot, 'he did'). There are three distinct types of aorist. 170 roots. I. The simple aorist adds the endings to the root either directly or with the connecting vowel -a-. It thus resembles the imperfect of the root- class or of the accented á- class. This type of aorist is formed by nearly Some nine or ten roots have, beside the regular forms of the simple aorist, a certain number of other forms which have the appearance of indicatives present. They seem to represent a transition to the formation of a new present stem. The most striking The most striking example is the aorist stem voca- from which the 3. sing. vocati occurs several times. 2. The reduplicated aorist resembles the imperfect of the reduplicating present class. It is, however, distinguishable from the latter not only in meaning, but by a certain peculiarity of reduplication and by being nearly always formed with a connecting -a-. This type of aorist is taken by about 85 roots. 3. The sigmatic aorist inserts -s-, with or without an added -a, between the root and the endings. It is taken by rather more than 200 roots. Thus each of the three types has one form following the analogy of the graded conjugation, and another following that of the a- conjugation. The sigmatic aorist has, however, further subdivisions. Upwards of 50 roots take more than one form of the aorist. One verb, budh- 'wake', has even forms from five varieties of the aorist; from two of the first type, e. g. á-bodh-i and budhá-nta; from one of the second, e. g. a-bubudh-a-t; and from two of the third, e. g. á-bhut-s-i and bódh-i-s-a-t. I With reversion to the original gut-| tural. 2 See WHITNEY, Sanskrit Grammar 1073 a, b; JACOBI, KZ. 35,578-587; BÖHTLINGK, ZDMG. 52, article 11; DELBRÜCK, Altindische Syutax 426 f.; LUDWIG, Sitzungsber. d. kgl. Böhm. Ges. d. W., phil.-hist. Kl. Nr. XIII. 3 There are, however, sometimes sporadic forms from the same stem as the aorist beside the normal ones; thus the 2. du. pres. ky-thás occurs besides the numerous regular forms of the nu- class.