संस्कृतव्याकरणम् · 25 of 27 Home
अष्टाध्यायी ३.१ – ३.४ · ४.१ – ५.४ · प्रयोगाभ्यासः

One sentence,
every रूपम्

Pages 11–19 each build one machine: the ten lakāras, the three voices, the causative and desiderative, the participles, the gerund and infinitive, the agent and action nouns, the taddhitas. This page runs all of them on the same few sentences — Rāma, Sītā, Lakṣmaṇa, Hanumān, Rāvaṇa, Janaka and Daśaratha, seeing, eating, drinking, serving, cooking, going, walking, running, laughing, staying — so you can watch what each one does to the rest of the sentence. That is where the grammar is.

+
→
धातुः — the same root throughout the word carrying the change

Pick a component, read its sentences

Choose a family, then one component — क्तवतु, अनीयर्, लृङ्, णिच् … — and every sentence on this page that uses it appears, English first. The word that carries the component is coloured. Tap any Sanskrit word and its forms open beside it — the analysis, its whole table with this form marked, and the root's other forms one tap away. Narrow by root to see one verb through everything. Switch on practice to hide the Sanskrit and translate first.

Family
Component
Root
Mode
    Every form of every word on this page — all ten lakāras of each root, its participles and other kṛdantas declined in every gender, and every noun — is collected on the next page, 26 · रूपकोशः, with a reverse lookup: type a form and it tells you what it is.

    One event, the whole ladder

    related sentences

    The same event, transformed rung by rung. Read down a column and only one thing changes at a time: the lakāra, then who the verb speaks for, then the verb becoming a participle, a gerund, an infinitive, a causative, a noun. The last column says what moved in the rest of the sentence — which is what you have to get right when you write.

    componentEnglishSanskritwhat moved

    Why the other words change

    2.3 · 3.4 · 1.4.52

    Turning a verb into another form is the easy half. The hard half is that the agent and the object move with it. Almost every change on this page is one of five rules.

    अनभिहिते1 · Whatever the verb form expresses is in प्रथमा; the rest take their own case

    A case ending marks only a role that the verb form has not already expressed (page 08). So the question to ask of any new form is: whom does it speak for? Whoever that is stands in प्रथमा. An unexpressed agent is तृतीया (), an unexpressed object द्वितीया (). The table is the whole page in one view.

    formspeaks foragentobjectexample
    Agent nouns are the odd one out. A kṛt noun such as ण्वुल् or तृच् is not a verb form at all, so its object cannot be द्वितीया; it goes to षष्ठी — (). The exceptions are listed in : — after क्त, क्तवतु, तृन् and the indeclinables the object stays द्वितीया.
    लः कर्मणि2 · Passive or impersonal depends on whether there is an object

    A transitive verb can be कर्तरि or कर्मणि; a verb used without an object can be कर्तरि or भावे. The morphology of कर्मणि and भावे is identical (-य- + ātmanepada, and चिण् in the third-person aorist, ); what differs is that भावे has nobody to agree with and so stays third person singular. The participles follow the same split: क्त and the kṛtyas are कर्मणि or भावे (), but क्त is कर्तरि with verbs of motion and verbs without an object () — रामः वनं गतः, सीता लङ्कायां स्थिता.

    णौ3 · The causative: what happens to the old agent

    In the causative a new agent appears, and the old one (the प्रयोज्य) has to go somewhere. 1.4.52 makes it a कर्म — द्वितीया — when the root means motion, perceiving/knowing, eating, has speech as its object, or has no object. Otherwise it stays a कर्ता, and, unexpressed, goes to तृतीया. Kātyāyana's vārttikas on the sūtra, as the corpus has them:

    Two matter here: दृशेश्च adds दृश् (seeing is not “knowing”, so it needed adding) and अदिखाद्योर्न removes अद् and खाद् — so with the same English verb “eat”, भुज् gives but खाद् gives .

    In the causative passive, the Mahābhāṣya on 1.4.51 says ण्यन्ते कर्तुश्च कर्मणः — the प्रयोज्य, now a कर्म, is what the passive expresses: . Where the प्रयोज्य stayed a कर्ता, the passive expresses the ordinary object instead: .
    समानकर्तृक4 · Gerund, infinitive, desiderative: one agent only

    क्त्वा/ल्यप् (3.4.21), तुमुन् with “wish” (3.3.158) and सन् (3.1.7) all require that the same person do both actions. When the agents differ, Sanskrit uses the locative absolute instead: “while Rāma looks on, the deer runs” (). And because सन् and तुमुन् + इच्छति say the same thing, the page shows them side by side: = .

    अद्य · ह्यः · श्वः5 · The time word chooses the lakāra

    Pāṇini divides past and future by today. “Today” in the past is लुङ्; “yesterday” is लङ् (अनद्यतने, before today) — or लिट् if the speaker did not see it. “Tomorrow” is लुट् (अनद्यतने again); लृट् is any future. So ह्यः with लुङ्, or अद्य with लङ्, is a mistake a reader will notice. And मा “don't” takes लुङ् with its augment removed ().

    How the sentences are written. Words are shown separated, as a learner writes them, not joined by sandhi; only मोऽनुस्वारः () is applied, so मृगम् before a consonant is written मृगं. In continuous prose रामः मृगं पश्यति becomes रामो मृगं पश्यति.

    Build your own sentence

    Pick a root, a lakāra, a voice and a person. In कर्तरि the person buttons choose the agent, and the verb follows it. In कर्मणि they still choose the agent — and the verb does not move; change the object's number instead and watch it follow. In भावे nothing moves at all.

    Root
    Lakāra
    Voice
    Agent
    Object no.

    Where every form came from

    honesty

    English into Sanskrit

    check yourself