CHAPTER 3

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Road Map: Verbs

A verb, broadly speaking, is a word that expresses an action (such as English she runs, I am singing,
they laughed).

This section will give an overview of (1) what kinds of information Sanskrit verb forms can express
and (2) how they express them. This involves introducing some new concepts and terminology. It
will be helpful to read this section more than once: when you have read everything through and
looked at the examples at the bottom, the first paragraphs may make more sense than when you
first read them.

1) THE CATEGORIES OF THE SANSKRIT VERB

We say that the Sanskrit verb is ‘marked for’ – that is, uses different forms to express – the following
grammatical categories: person and number; tense, mood and voice.

In the category of person, Sanskrit and English alike differentiate between first, second and third.
The first person refers to the speaker (‘I’); the second to the person spoken to (‘you’); and the third
person to someone or something spoken about (‘he/she/it’). Again like English, Sanskrit has a
singular and a plural number: the singular refers to just one thing or person (‘I’, ‘she’, ‘the chocolate
cake’ etc.), while the plural refers to several (‘we’, ‘they’, ‘the cats’ etc.). Yet unlike English, Sanskrit
also has a dual number, used to refer to exactly two of something; this should be translated into
English either exactly as e.g. ‘we two, the two of us’, ‘the two of them’, ‘the two brothers’, or simply
as a plural ‘we’, ‘they’, ‘the brothers’.

Tense is the term for time as it is expressed in verbs. Once again like English, Sanskrit verbs can
refer to the present (such as ‘I run’), and are then said to stand in the present tense; they can refer
to the future (‘I will run’); or they can refer to the past (‘I ran’). Sanskrit has several ways of refer-
ring to the past; these various tenses (referred to as imperfect, aorist and perfect, respectively) are
formed in different ways, but generally express the same thing: an action that took place prior to
the present. Unlike English, Sanskrit does not make a distinction between ‘simple’ and ‘continuous’
forms (such as English ‘I run’ vs. ‘I am running’; ‘I ran’ vs. ‘I was running’; ‘I will run’ vs. ‘I will be

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 running’). Depending on the context, a Sanskrit verb form such as भरति bharati may thus have to
3 be translated as either ‘(he) carries’ or ‘(he) is carrying’.

The different moods of a verb express different kinds of utterance: while the indicative is basically
used for statements about reality, i.e. things that are (such as ‘You are going to the city’), the p­ otential
generally expresses possibilities or wishes, i.e. things that could be (‘You should/might/could go to
the city’, ‘If you go to the city…’, or even a future-like ‘You will go to the city’). The Sanskrit potential
is regularly used only in the present tense. It is sometimes called the subjunctive or the optative. The
imperative mood expresses commands and strong wishes (‘Go to the city!’, ‘Let him go to the city!’).

Voice is the term that covers active (‘I carry’) and passive (‘I am carried’). Sanskrit also has a third
voice, the middle. At an earlier stage of the language, its function was somewhere in ‘the middle’ of
active and passive. Yet this distinction in meaning was lost, and only the separate set of middle forms
survived. This may sound confusing now, yet the question of how to treat and translate middle forms
will be discussed in great detail when the middle is introduced in Chapter 21. In relation to voice,
you are likely to hear also the terminology introduced by the ancient Indian grammarians: para­
smaipada, lit. ‘word for another’, is the ‘active’ and ātmanepada, lit. ‘word for oneself ’, is the middle.

In addition to basic verb forms there also are ‘secondary’ or ‘derived’ verb forms: on the basis of e.g.
‘he carries’, there also is a causative ‘he causes (someone) to carry’ and a desiderative ‘he desires/
wants to carry’.

Finite and Non-Finite Verb Forms

Any verb form that is marked for all of the above categories is called finite. Compare English exam-
ples of finite verbs such as I will go, which is 1st (person) singular (number) future (tense) indicative
(mood) active (voice) or they would be carried (3rd plural present subjunctive passive).

In addition to these finite forms, there are non-finite verb forms, so called as they are less finite/
definite in the information they convey: the most frequent of these are the infinitive (compare the
English infinitive ‘to go’) used in Sanskrit mostly after finite verbs in expressions such as ‘I want to
go’ or ‘I am able to go’, several participles (comparable to English participles: ‘doing’ (present ac-
tive); ‘having done’ (past active); ‘having been done’ (past passive)), and the absolutive (also called
the ‘gerund’, and similar in function to a past active participle: ‘having done’). Participles and the
absolutive are extremely frequent in Sanskrit. Finally, the gerundive expresses the idea of ‘passive
necessity’, i.e. ‘having to be done; (which) should/must be done’.

Note that the participles and the gerundive are declined (–› Chapter 5) like adjectives,
while the absolutive and infinitive (–› Chapter 8) both have only one form for each verb.
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2) HOW THESE CATEGORIES ARE EXPRESSED

As we have just seen, verbs in Sanskrit and English express more or less the same information: San-
skrit verbs, just like their English counterparts, tell us who is doing something (person, number),
when this is done (tense) and how it is done (mood, voice).

The main difference lies in how the two languages express this information. As a general rule,
English adds small independent words before the verb form itself, while Sanskrit adds affixes and
endings, elements that cannot stand on their own. Compare the following:

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 English Sanskrit
3 1) a) you carry भरसि bharasi The category of person is expressed by an
independent word (you, they etc.) in English,
b) they carry भरन्ति bharanti but by an ending (-si,-nti etc.) in Sanskrit.

2) a) you carry भरसि bharasi The same is the case for tense: just as English
expresses the difference between present
b) you will carry भरिष्यसि bhariṣyasi (I carry) and future (I will carry) by adding an
extra word (will) between the element express-
ing person (I) and the verb (carry), so does
Sanskrit add a suffix (here: -iṣya-) between the
stem of the verb (bhar-) and the ending (-si)
that indicates person and number.

TECHNICAL NOTE I: VERBAL ROOTS, STEMS AND VERB CLASSES

In a dictionary or vocabulary list, a verb is listed under its so-called root (which is typically marked
using the √ symbol also employed for roots in mathematics). Roots are abstract forms arrived at by
grammarians: the root of a verb is its minimal form, the element that conveys the basic meaning of
the verb, left over when all markers of person, number, tense, voice and mood have been removed.
For example: √अस् as is the root of the verb ‘to be’. This form is not actually ever encountered in any
sentence or text; instead, one finds only complete forms such as अस्मि asmi ‘I am’ or अस्ति asti ‘he
is’ (with the endings -mi and -ti marking these forms as 1st and 3rd person singular, respectively).

Some verbs add endings straight onto the root. Yet in most verbs, the form of the root itself is
changed before endings are added to it. These changes involve adding something before, into or
behind the root. The form of the verb onto which the actual endings are then added is called the
verbal stem. (In the case of verbs to whose root we find endings added directly, we say that the stem
is identical to the root, or refer to it as a root stem.) To give some examples of this very abstract
account: the verb √अस् as ‘to be’ adds endings directly to the unchanged root; the verb √विश् viś ‘to
enter’ adds the vowel -a- after the stem; the verb √दा dā ‘to give’ adds the syllable da- in front of the
root. Thus the 3rd Sg Present of each verb looks as follows:

Root Stem Ending Full form

√अस् as अस्- as- -ति -ti अस्ति asti ‘he/she/it is’
√विश् viś विश- viśa- -ति -ti विशति viśati ‘he/she/it enters’
√दा dā ददा- dadā- -ति -ti ददाति dadāti ‘he/she/it gives’

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Sanskrit actually has not just three, but ten different ways of forming such present verbal stems. As
we have just seen, these additions do not change the meaning of the root; the changes are purely 3
formal. All the roots that form their present stem in the same way are said to be in the same Stem
or Verb Class. Roots often belong to just one class, but many have forms made according to dif-
ferent classes. From looking at a root, one cannot know which class(es) it belongs to. Hence this
­information is provided in any dictionary or vocabulary list and needs to be memorised. A com-
plete dictionary entry for a verb would look as follows:

Root Verb class 3rd Sg Present Meaning

√दा dā (III ददाति dadāti) ‘to give’

Note that not just the verb class, but also a form containing the actual present stem (by convention:
the 3rd Sg Present Indicative Active) are listed. This is necessary because the form of the present
stem may be irregular.

TECHNICAL NOTE II: AFFIXES AND ENDINGS

To clarify some terminology: an affix can be added anywhere to a stem or a verbal root, whether
before it (a prefix), into it (an infix) or after it (a suffix). An ending is always added after the stem
and, more importantly, creates a complete verb (or noun) form: thus, भरिष्यसि bhariṣyasi above
contains the future suffix -iṣya- and the 2nd Sg ending -si.

TECHNICAL NOTE III: PUNCTUATION MARKS

While English has a full array of punctuation marks – commas, full stops, question marks, excla-
mation marks etc. – Sanskrit does with only two signs. । (called a daṇḍa ‘stick’) marks the end of
any sentence (and thus is the equivalent of a full stop, exclamation mark and question mark – by
looking at the context, you will be able to determine what kind of sentence you are looking at). In
metrical texts, । is used to mark the end of a line, whereas ॥ marks the end of a metrical unit (such
as a stanza). In prose texts, ॥ may be used to mark the end of a paragraph, story etc.

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 THE NUTSHELL
3 Categories of the Verb
Person Number Tense Voice Mood
1 ‘I’ Singular (Sg) Present (Pres) Active (Act) Indicative (Ind)
2 ‘you’ Dual (Du) Future (Fut) Middle (Mid) Potential (Pot)
3 ‘he/she/it’ Plural (Pl) Past: Imperfect (Impf), Passive (Pass) Imperative (Impv)
Aorist (Aor),
Perfect (Perf)
How they are usually expressed
English: Adds independent words before the verb.
Sanskrit: Adds affixes and endings onto the verb.
Roots and stems
Root: The minimal shape of a verb.
Stem: The root plus different affixes.
Add the ending and you have a complete word.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1) What is the potential mood?

2) What does ‘number’ mean when used as a grammatical term?
3) Which numbers does Sanskrit have?
4) Which categories is the Sanskrit verb marked for?
5) What is a verbal root? How is it different from a verbal stem?
6) How is the present tense stem of a Sanskrit verb formed?
7) What are ‘finite’ verb forms?
8) How does Sanskrit express a continuous present, such as ‘she is writing’ rather than ‘she
writes’?
9) What is the difference in meaning between the different verb classes?

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