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A passage for editorial review. SANSKRIT GRAMMAR FOR STUDENTS Third edition 1927 Reprinted lithographically in Great Britain by LOWE & BRYDONE (PRINTERS) LTD., LONDON 1950, 1955. 1959. 1962 A SANSKRIT GRAMMAR FOR STUDENTS BY ARTHUR A. MACDONELL M.A., Ph.D., LL.D. (Edin.), D.O.L. (Calcutta), late Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford; Hon. Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Fellow of the British Academy . THIRD EDITION / V OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS * library 4 9 /.^, —-A? //3 s K 7 J.& K. UNIVERSITY LIB. Acc No i> A I A S'- Dote -.^4"- *7 MI l a ■- PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION In preparing a new edition of this grammar I have found misprints requiring correction to be few and insignificant. The alterations that seemed necessary are nearly all concerned with facilitating the use of the book for student^ One of these is the indication of the relevant numbei^of^apter and paragraph on the inside top corner of each page. Since the grammar is intended to supply a complete account of Classical Sanskrit, many paragraphs may be omitted till a later stage of study. I therefore here append a list of those which are essential for absolute beginners and thus constitute a virtual primer of Classical Sanskrit. Is 1-7, 8-12, 13. II: ]6—22, 27, 30-34, 36 A. B., 37, 38, 40, 42-44, 45, 1. 2, 52-55, 65, 67. Ills 70, 71, 73, 74, 77, 85, 87, 90, 1, 97, 100, 101 D (p. 63), 103, 1, 2, 109-m, 120. IV: 121-128, 131, 132 (only Pres. Par., pp. 92, 98), 135, 136, 138, 1 (only V tud.j Par'.), 141 a (only Par.),-I43, 1 (only Par.), 147 (only Par.), 148 (only adarri ), 151 (only Par.), 154 (only Pres.), 156, 160, 1, 2, 162, 163, 167, 168, 169, 172, 175. When the student has gone through these paragraphs he will be quite prepared to begin reading. Any new gram¬ matical forms he now meets with he will be able to find explained in the paragraphs that have been passed over. In this way he will uffifij|St{*nd, with the aid of a vocabulary, every word in the first canto of the'S^Sfcof ^ala within the course of a month, and know all the grnimnfr necessary for necessary for reading easy Sanskrit texts. vi PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION Since the appearance of the second edition of this work (191 1) my Vedic Grammar for Students was published (1916). Though this new book seemed at first sight to make Appendix III superfluous in the present work (pp. 236-44), I decided to retain it as presenting Yedic grammar in an abridged form and rendering it easier for absolute beginners to master. A. A. M. 20 Rardwelj, Road. Oxford. y v ember, 1926. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION The original form of the present work was my abridgement (1886) of Max Muller’s Sanskrit Grammar (2nd ed., 1870). That abridgement wa9 the outcome of what I had found by experience, both as a learner and a teacher, to be unessential in an elementary grammar. It was also partly due to my con¬ viction that the existing Sanskrit grammars, being too much dominated by the system of Panini, rendered Sanskrit un¬ necessarily hard to learn. The introductory sketch of the history of Sanskrit grammar prefixed to the present yolume will, I think, sufficiently show that the native Indian system is incompatible with the practical methods of teaching and learning in the West. In the first edition of this grammar, published in 1901, the earlier book was transformed into an entirely new work. Though, on the whole, considerably enlarged it showed many omissions. For I made it my guiding principle to leave out all matter that is found exclusively in Vedic literature or in the Hindu grammarians, the aim I had in view being to describe only such grammatical forms as are to be met with in the actual literature of post-Yedic Sanskrit. The student of Sanskrit grammar would thus not be burdened with matter which could never be of any practical use to him. Hence I refrained from employing, even in a paradigm, any word not to be found in the literature; though for the sake of completeness I here often gave inflected forms represented only by other words of the same type. The purpose of the book, then, was not to supply a mass of forms and rules mainly useful for answering examination questions more or Vlll PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION less mechanically, but to provide the student with the full grammatical equipment necessary for reading any Sanskrit text with ease and exactness. The present edition has undergone a thorough revision aided by the experience of ten more years’ teaching and by the sugges¬ tions of pupils and othei's who have used the first edition. The improvements chiefly consist of additions, which have increased the size of the book by twenty-four pages. An entirely new portion of the grammar are the three sections comprised in pages 159—168. The first (182) deals with nominal stem formation, giving an account of the primary and secondary suffixes, and thus furnishing the student with a more complete insight into the structure of Sanskrit words than the first edition supplied. I11 connexion with these suffixes a survey (183) of the rules of gender is added. The third new section (184) describes the formation of verbal compounds. The most noticeable case of expansion is otherwise to be found in the rules about the treatment of final dental n in Sandhi: these now give a complete account (36, 40) of the changes undergone by that letter. In the accidence a few new paradigms have been introduced, such as gravan (90, 4), and additional forms have been given, as in the difficult s-aorist of dah, where (144,5) even middle forms, though not occurring in that verb, are supplied as a model for other verbs presenting similar difficulties of euphonic combination. Other improvements are irltended to facilitate the use of the grammar. Thus in the list of verbs (Appendix I) abbreviations have been added to indicate the various fonns which beginners have otherwise often found difficulty in identifying. Again, the Sanskrit Index has been made both fuller and more explanatory (see e.g. prakjrta). A decidedly practical improvement is the substitution of a brief synopsis of the subject-matter for an elaborate table of contents at the beginning, and the addition of a General Index at the PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION IX cud. All these extensions and changes will, I feel sure, he found to have considerably increased the practical value of the grammar both in matter and form. As in the first edition, the book is transliterated throughout, excepting the list of verbs (Appendix I) and the syntactical examples at the end (180; 190-218). The system of trans¬ literation remains the same, being that which is now most generally adopted in the West. This system includes the use of T ( to be pronounced with a syllabic value, as the r in French chambre) to represent the weak grade of the syllables ar and ra. The improvements appearing in this edition are largely due to the suggestions of former pupils or of friends. The gentlemen to whom I owe thanks for their advice are—Prof. E. J. Rapson; Dr. James Morison; Mr. M. L. Puri, B.A., of Exeter College; Mr. Horace Hart, M.A., Controller of the University Press; and especially Mr.T.E.Moir, I.C.S.,of Wad ham College, as well as Dr. F. W. Thomas, Librarian of the India Office. Mr. J. C. Pembrey, Hon. M.A., Oriental Reader of the University Press, has read with his usual care the proofs of this edition, which is separated by no less an interval than sixty-four years from the first Sanskrit Grammar which he (together with his father) corrected for the press, that of Prof. H. H. Wilson, in 1847. To Dr. A. B. Keith I am indebted for reading the proofs of this as well as of all the other books I have published since 1900. I must take this opportunity of thanking him not only for having read the proofs of the whole of my Vedic Grammar, but also for having passed several sheets of that work through the press for me during my absence in India between September, 1907, and April, 1908. A. A. MACDONELL. 107 Banbury Road, Oxford. July , 1911. a 2 INTRODUCTION BRIEF HISTORY OF SANSKRIT GRAMMAR The first impulse to the study of grammar in India was given hy the religious motive of preserving intact the sacred Vedic texts, the efficacy of which was believed to require attention to every letter. Thus, aided by the great transparency of the Sanskrit language, the ancient Indian grammarians had by the fifth cen¬ tury b.c. arrived at scientific results unequalled by any other nation of antiquity. It is, for instance, their distinctive achieve¬ ment to have recognized that words for the most part consist on the one hand of roots, and on the other of affixes, which, when com¬ pounded with the former, modify the radical sense in various ways. • The oldest grammar that has been preserved is Panini’s. It already represents a fully developed system, its author standing at the end of a long line of predecessors, of whom no fewer than sixty-four are mentioned, and the purely grammatical works of all of whom, owing to the excellence and comprehensiveness of his work, have entirely perished. ' P&nini is considerably luter than Yaska (probably about 500 b.c.), whom he mentions, and between whom and himself a good number of important grammarians intervene. On the other hand, Panini is much older than his interpreter Patafijali, who probably dates from the latter half of the second century b.c., the two being separated by another eminent grammarian, Katya- yana. Panini himself uses the word yavanani, which Katyayana explains as ‘ writing of the Yavauas ' (i.e. Iaones or Greeks)./Now it is not at all likely that the Indians should have become acquainted with Greek writing before the invasion of Alexander in 327 b.c.