Indian Antiquary Vol 14

Author(s): John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 45

FEBRUARY, 1885].
point, they are the more suspicious as lacking any tolerable measure of support from the facts of the older language. But there are much greater weaknesses than these in the grammarians' treatment of the aorist.
STUDY OF HINDU GRAMMAR AND SANSKRIT.
Let us first turn our attention to the aorist optative, the so-called precative (or benedictive). This formation is by the native grammarians not recognised as belonging to the aorist at all-not even so far as to be put next the aorist in their general scheme of conjugation; they suffer the future-systems to intervene between the two. This is in them fairly excusable as concerns the precative active, since it is the optative of the root-aorist, and so has an aspect as if it might come independently from the root directly. Nor, indeed, can we much blame them for overlooking the relation of their precative middle to the sibilant or sigmatic aorist, considering that they ignore tense-systems and modes; but that their European imitators, down to the very latest, should commit the same oversight is a different matter. The contrast, now, between the grammarians' dialect and the real Sanskrit is most marked as regards the middle forms. According to the grammar, the precative middle is to be made from every root, and even for its secondary conjugations, the causative, etc. It has two alternative modes of formation, which we see to correspond to two of the forms of the sibilant aorist: the s-aorist, namely, and the ish-aorist. Of course, a complete inflection is allowed it. To justify all this, now, I am able to point to only a single occurrence of a middle precative in the whole later literature, including the epics: that is ririshishta in the BhagavataPurána (III. 9, 24), a text notable for its artificial imitation of ancient forms (the same word occurs also in the Rig-Veda). It is made, as will be noticed, from a reduplicated aorist stem, and so is unauthorized by grammatical rule. A single example in a whole literature, and that a false one! In the pre-classical literature also, middle precative forms are made hardly more than sporadically, or from less than 40 roots in all, (so far as I have found) those belonging to the s and ishaorists are, indeed, among the most numerous (14 each), but those of the root-aorist do not
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fall short of them (also 14 roots), and there are examples from three of the other four aorists. Except a single 3rd pl., (in irata, instead of iran), only the three singular persons and the 1st pl. are quotable, and forms occur without, as well as with, the adscititious s between mode-sign and personal ending which is the special characteristic of a precative as distinguished from a simply optative form. Here, again, we have a formation sporadic in the early language and really extinct in the later, but erected by the grammarians into a regular part of every verb-system.
With the precative active the case is somewhat different. This also, indeed, is rare even. to sporadicalness, being, so far as I know, made from only about 60 roots in the whole language-and of these, only half can show forms containing the true precative s. But it is not quite limited to the pre-classical dialects: it is made also later from 15 roots, 9 of which are additional to those which make a precative in the older language. Being in origin an optative of the root-aorist, it comes, as we may suppose, to seem to be a formation from the root directly, and so to be extended beyond the limits of the aorist. From a clear majority (about three fifths) of all the roots. that make it, it has no other aorist forms by its side. And this begins even in the earliest period, (with half-a-dozen roots in the Veda, and toward a score besides in the Brahmana and Sûtra); although there the precative more usually makes a part of a general aoristformation for instance, and especially, from the root bhu, whose precative forms are oftener met with than those of all other roots together, and which is the only root from which more than two real precative persons are quotable. How rare it is even in the epos is shown by the fact that Holtzmann" is able to quote only six forms, (and one of these doubtful, and another a false formation), from the whole Mahábhárata, one of them occurring twice; while the first book of the Rámáyana (about 4500 lines) has the single bhúyat. Since it is not quite extinct in the classical period, the Hindu grammarians could not, perhaps, well help teaching its formation, and, considering the general absence of perspective
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In his work already cited, at p. 82.