Lesson 7 – सष्ठम पाठः

हरिः ॐ !

Getting started to look the Sanskrit Sentences in a grammatical approach. Although we have started to speak Sanskrit sentences in the previous chapters, this lesson is gonna be a very useful one for us, that can teach us more grammatical. So far, we have discussed about the persons in a sentence in Lesson 6.

Lets read the following sentence to understand these basic elements of a sentence.

ex:  The boy is reading a book – बालकः पुस्तकम्  पठति.

In the sentence “boy” is the “Subject”, “reading” is “Verb” and the “book” is the “Object”.

The boy(बालकः )              is reading (पठति)          a book. (पुस्तकम् )
|    Subject        |            |      Verb          |        |      object          |

“who is reading?” – “the boy”. So, the “boy” here is the Subject. It is also called the “Noun”. The answer that comes in response to question “what is the boy doing?” is “reading”. The “reading” here is the “Verb”. Similarly the answer to “what is the boy reading?” is “book”. The “book” becomes the “Object”.

Lets see another example.

ex:  The boy is laughing – बालकः हास्यति.

In the above sentence “boy” is the “Subject“, “laughing” is “Verb”. But, there is no “Object” in this sentence.

The boy(बालकः)            is laughing (हास्यति).
|    Subject      |          |         Verb            |

“what is the boy laughing?” no answer for this question. So, laughing becomes an “Intransitive Verb“. However in the first sentence “what is the boy reading?” gives answer “book”. In this case the “reading” becomes a “Transitive Verb”.

Now we have understood the basic elements of a sentence, we will begin with more details of Sanskrit language.

These are the Sanskrit words used to express the following terms:

Subject is called -> कर्ता / kartA
Object is called  -> कर्म / karma
Verb is called    -> क्रिया / kriyA
Transitive Verb is called   -> सकर्मक / sakarmaka
Intransitive Verb is called -> अकर्मक / akarmaka

Hence we can understand from the above statements:

The boy(बालकः )        is reading (पठति)       a book. (पुस्तकम् )
|    Subject      |       |      Verb          |       |      object     |
|    कर्ता/kartaa  |       |  क्रिया/kriyaa      |       |      (सकर्मक / sakarmaka)   कर्म/karma   |

The boy(बालकः)         is laughing (हास्यति).
|    Subject      |       |      Verb    |
|    कर्ता/kartaa  |       | क्रिया/kriyaa (अकर्मक / akarmaka) |

Classified view of words:

In all the languages a sentence is made up of multiple words composed in a well defined structure giving a sensible meaning to the sentence. These words can be categorized into three different types

• Noun
• Verb
• Indeclinable

Besides the above classifications nouns and verbs can also be part of following categories with minor derivations like addition of ‘ility’, ‘ily’, ‘tion’, ‘ing’ etc., as well as based on their usage and grammatical rules

• Pronoun
• Adjective
• Adverb

Also in Sanskrit, words are classified into similar categories. Following is a representation of the important classifications. We can see the classification is almost same as all the other languages. Each classification has been described in the coming chapters.

                     |--------------- Noun Root (शब्द / shabda)
                     |                             |
                     |              ------------------------------
                     |             |                              |
                     |           सुवन्तपद                         तद्धितपद
                     |           suvantapada                    taddhitapada
                     |             |
                     |         ---------------------------------------------
                     |        |                    |                        |
Word (पद / pada) ----|    Masculine             Feminine                Neuter
                     |    पुलिङ्ग                 स्त्रीलिङ्ग                  नपुङ्सकलिन्ग
                     |    pulinga               strIlinga               napunsakalinga
                     |
                     |
                     |--------------- Verb Root (धातु / dhAtu)
                                                   |
                             ---------------------------------------------
                            |                                             |
                         तिङतपद                                        कृदन्तपद
                         tintapada                                     krudantapada
                            |
         ------------------------------------------------------------
        |                             |                              |
     परस्मैपदी                         आत्मनेपदी                      उभयपदी
  parasmaipadI                       AtmanepadI                   ubhayapadI

Nouns (शब्द / shabda): Noun is the word that represents someone or something in a sentence. Noun normally refers to person, place, thing, state or quality etc. A noun is the only word that can be used as the subject or object for a verb in a sentence.

Noun in Sanskrit is called शब्द (shabda) or noun-root. It is also called कर्तृपद (kartrupada). Noun can be classified into सुवन्तपद (suvantapada) and तद्धितपद (taddhipada).

सुवन्तपद (suvantapada):

1. This classification is based on the gender, number and case of the noun. The noun-forms are used to express something or someone etc.
2. सुवन्तपद or suvantapada meaning – words ending with सुप् (sup) suffix.
3. In this classification nouns are categorised into three different “genders” (लिङ्ग / liN^ga) such as, “masculine” (पुंलिङ्ग / pu.nliN^ga), “feminine” (स्त्रीलिङ्ग / striiliN^ga) and “neuter” (नपुंसकलिङ्ग / napu.nsakaliN^ga).
4. Each noun also has three “numbers” (वचन / vachana viz., एकवचन – singular , द्वीवच्न – dual, बहुवचन – plural) and 7 “cases” (विभक्ति / vibhakti).
5. Each noun has a different derivation based on the “number” and “case”. Unlike other languages, in Sanskrit the noun has its different forms built into itself. The “noun base” is called शब्द (shabda) and the “derived noun forms” are called शब्दरुप (shabdarupa).

तद्धितपद (taddhitapada): In this classification special suffixes are added to the noun to get noun forms used as – subject, adjectives, indeclinable etc.

— शुभमस्तु —