कारकम् — the six roles and the cases that mark them

Two chapters, two jobs

1.4 · 2.3

Almost every textbook presents this as "the seven cases and their uses". That is backwards, and it is why students who have learnt the cases still cannot explain why रामेण रावणो हतः puts Rāma in the instrumental.

कारकेChapter 1.4 defines the roles

1.4.23 is an अधिकार — a heading that governs everything after it. The sūtras under it define semantic roles: who acts, what is reached, what the action rests on. Not one of them mentions a case ending.

And the definitions are worth reading closely, because they are not the ones a textbook usually gives:

स्वतन्त्रः कर्ता1.4.54 — the independent one कर्तुरीप्सिततमं कर्म1.4.49 — what the agent most wants to reach साधकतमं करणम्1.4.42 — the most effective means

Notice the superlatives. -तम in ईप्सिततम, साधकतम. Several things in a sentence may be reached; the कर्म is the one most aimed at. Several may help; the करण is the one that helps most. Pāṇini is not classifying the world — he is describing how a speaker chooses to present it. That is why the same event can be told in more than one way, and why स्वतन्त्रः means "presented as acting on its own", not "actually in control".

अनभिहितेChapter 2.3 assigns the endings — under one condition

2.3.1 is a single word — , when not [already] expressed — and it governs the whole chapter that follows. A case ending appears on a word only if the verb has not already expressed that role.

That one word does all the work that textbooks attribute to "the passive voice":

रामः रावणं हन्ति ।

Active. The verb हन्ति expresses the agent (its ending is 3rd singular, agreeing with Rāma). So the agent's role is expressed — no case is assigned for it, and राम appears in the bare प्रथमा. The object is unexpressed, so it takes द्वितीया by .

रामेण रावणो हतः ।

Same event. Now the participle हतः agrees with Rāvaṇa — so the object is expressed, and takes no case for its role. The agent is now unexpressed, and 2.3.18 gives it तृतीया.

This is why the agent and the instrument share a case. कर्तृकरणयोस्तृतीया — one sūtra, both roles. Not a coincidence, not two rules that happen to collide: Pāṇini states them together because in an unexpressed position they behave identically. A textbook that teaches "instrumental = by/with" and then treats the passive agent as a special idiom has hidden the rule.

The roles and their endings

side by side

Read the two right-hand columns as separate facts. The left says what the role is; the right says what ending it gets when unexpressed. Six roles — and one row that is not a role at all.

विभक्तिः	कारकम् — the role	defined by	case assigned by

षष्ठी is the odd one out, and the corpus says so. — 2.3.50, "the sixth, in the remainder". There is no 1.4 sūtra defining a genitive kāraka, because the genitive does not mark a participant in the action at all. रामस्य पुत्रः — Rāma's son — relates two nouns, not a noun and a verb. Six kārakas, seven cases; the mismatch is the point.

One word through seven roles

Interactive

Pick a word and a role. The form is the corpus's — you can check any cell of this dial against the reference paradigm and find it identical.

शब्दः

कारकम्

रामः

What this buys you when reading

Practice

Case endings are the parse. Sanskrit word order is free precisely because the endings already say who did what — so a reader who reads endings first is never lost, however the words are arranged.

अभ्यासःThe same sentence, four waysfree word order

रामः बाणेन रावणं हन्ति ।

बाणेन रावणं रामः हन्ति ।

रावणं रामः बाणेन हन्ति ।

हन्ति रामः रावणं बाणेन ।

All four say the same thing: Rāma kills Rāvaṇa with an arrow. रामः is nominative wherever it stands, so it is the agent; रावणम् is accusative, so it is what is reached; बाणेन is instrumental, so it is the means. Move the words about all you like — the endings do not move.

So read endings before you read order. The commonest beginner's error is to assume the first word is the subject. In Sanskrit the first word is whatever the author wanted first — for emphasis, for metre, or for the sound. Only the ending tells you the role.

Check yourself

अभ्यासः

Six questions. Every one is answered by a sūtra, not by feel.