543. Singular: First person. The primary ending in the active is mi. The subjunctive, however (later imperative), has ni instead; and in the oldest Veda this ni is sometimes wanting, and the person ends in a (as if the ni of ani were dropped). The secondary ending is m; and to this m an a has come to be so persistently prefixed, appearing always where the tense-stem does not itself end in a (vam for varm or varam in RV., once, is an isolated anomaly), that it is necessary to reckon am as ending, alternate with m. But the perfect tense has neither mi nor m; its ending is simply a (sometimes ā: 248 c): or, from a-roots, āu.

The primary middle ending, according to the analogy of the other persons, would be regularly me. But no tense or mode, at any period of the language, shows any relic whatever of a m in this person: the primary ending, present as well as perfect, from a-stems and others alike, is e; and to it corresponds as secondary ending, which blends with the final of an a-stem to e. The optative has, however, a instead of i; and in the subjunctive (later imperative) appears ai for e.

544. Second person. In the active, the primary ending is si, which is shortened to s as secondary: as to the loss of this s after a final radical consonant, see below, 555. But the perfect and the imperative desert here entirely the analogy of the other forms. The perfect ending is invariably tha (or tha, 248 c). The imperative is far less regular. The fullest form of its ending is dhi; which, however, is more often reduced to hi; and in the great majority of verbs (including all a-stems, at every period of the language) no ending is present, but the bare stem stands as personal form. In a very small class of verbs (722) āna is the ending. The Veda has also an ending tāt; and this is even used sporadically in other persons of the imperative (see below, 570—1).

In the middle voice, the primary ending, both present and perfect, is se. The secondary stands in no apparent relation to this, being thas; and in the imperative is found only sva (or svā: 248 c), which in the Veda is not seldom to be read as sua. In the older language, se is sometimes strengthened to sai in the subjunctive.

545. Third person. The active primary ending is ti; the secondary, t: as to the loss of the latter after a final radical consonant, see below, 555. But in the imperative appears instead the peculiar ending tu; and in the perfect no characteristic consonant is present, and the third person has the same ending as the first.

The primary middle ending is te, with ta as corresponding secondary. In the older language, te is often strengthened to tai in the subjunctive. In the perfect, the middle third person has, like the active, the same ending with the first, namely e simply; and in the older language, the third person present also often loses the distinctive part of its termination, and comes to coincide in form with the first. To this e perhaps corresponds, as secondary, the i of the aorist 3d pers. passive (842 ff.. The imperative has tam (or, in the Veda, rarely am, for its ending.

546. Dual: First person. Both in active and in middle, the dual first person is in all its varieties precisely like the corresponding plural, only with substitution of v for the m of the latter: thus, vas (no vasi has been found to occur, ra, vahe, vahi, vahai. The person is, of course, of comparatively rare use, and from the Veda no form in vas, even, is quotable.

547. Second and Third persons. In the active, the primary ending of the second person is thas, and that of the third is tas; and this relation of th to t appears also in the perfect, and runs through the whole series of middle endings. The perfect endings are primary, but have u instead of a as vowel; and an a has become so persistently prefixed that their forms have to be reckoned as athus and atus. The secondary endings exhibit no definable relation to the primary in these two persons; they are tam and tām; and they are used in the imperative as well.

In the middle, a long ā which, however, with the final a of a-stems becomes e has become prefixed to all dual endings of the second and third persons, so as to form an inseparable part of them. The primary endings, present and perfect, are athe and ate; the secondary (and imperative) are āthām and ātām (or, with stem-final a, ethe etc.).

The Rig Veda has a very few forms in aithe and aite, apparently from ethe and ete with subjunctive strengthening (they are all detailed below: see 615, 701, 737, 752, 836, 1008, 1043).

The earliest form of the oldest language is more

548. Plural: First person. active ending is masi, which in the frequent than the briefer mas (in RV., as five to one; in AV., however, only as three to four). In the classical Sanskrit, mas is the exclusive primary ending; but the secondary abbreviated ma belongs also to the perfect and the subjunctive (imperative. In the Veda, ma often becomes mā (248c), especially in the perfect.

The primary middle ending is mahe. This is lightened in the secondary form to mahi; and, on the other hand, it is regu

larly (in the Veda, not invariably) strengthened to mahai in the subjunctive (imperative).

549. Second person. The active primary ending is tha. The secondary, also imperative, ending is ta (in the Veda, tā only once in impv.). But in the perfect any characteristic consonant is wanting, and the ending is simply a. In the Veda, the syllable na, of problematic origin, is not infrequently added to both forms of the ending, making thana (rarely thanā) and tana. The forms in which this occurs will be detailed below, under the different formations: the addition is very rarely made excepting to persons of the first general conjugation.

The middle primary ending is dhve, which belongs to the perfect as well as the present. In the subjunctive of the older language it is sometimes strengthened to dhvai. The secondary (and imperative) ending is dhvam (in RV., once dhva); and dhvat is once met with in the imperative (570). In the Veda, the of all these endings is sometimes resolved into u, and the ending becomes dissyllabic.

550. Third person. The full primary ending is anti in the active, with ante as corresponding middle. The middle secondary ending is anta, to which should correspond an active ant; but of the only altogether questionable traces are left, in the euphonic treatment of a final n (207); the ending is an. In the imperative, antu and antām take the place of anti and ante. The initial a of all these endings is like that of am in the 1st sing., disappearing after the final a of a tense-stem.

Moreover, anti, antu, ante, antām, anta are all liable to be weakened by the loss of their nasal, becoming ati etc. In the active, this weakening takes place only after reduplicated stems (and after a few roots which are treated as if reduplicated: 639 ff.); in the middle, it occurs after all tense-stems save those ending in a.

Further, for the secondary active ending an there is a substitute us (or ur: 169, end), which is used in the same reduplicating verbs that change anti to ati etc., and which accordingly appears as a weaker correlative of an. The same us is also used universally in the perfect, in the optative (not in the subjunctive), in those forms of the aorist whose stem does not end in a, and in the imperfect of roots ending in a, and a few others (621).

The perfect middle has in all periods of the language the peculiar ending re, and the optative has the allied ran, in this person. In the Veda, a variety of other endings containing a r as distinctive consonant are met with namely, re (and ire) and rate in the present; rata in the optative (both of present and of

aorist; rire in the perfect; ranta, ran, and ram in aorists (and in an imperfect or two); rām and ratām in the imperative. The three rate, ratām, and rata are found even in the later language in one or two verbs (629).

551. Below are given, for convenience, in tabular form, the schemes of endings as accepted in the classical or later language namely, a. the regular primary endings, used in the present indicative and the future (and the subjunctive in part); and b. the regular secondary endings, used in the imperfect, the conditional, the aorist, the optative (and the subjunctive in part); and further, of special schemes, c. the perfect endings (chiefly primary, especially in the middle); and d. the imperative endings (chiefly secondary). To the so-called imperative endings of the first person is prefixed the a which is practically a part of them, though really containing the mode-sign of the subjunctive from which they are derived.

552. Further, a part of the endings are marked with an accent, and a part are left unaccented. The latter are those which never, under any circumstances, receive the accent; the former are accented in considerable classes of verbs, though by no means in all. It will be noticed that, in general, the unaccented endings are those of the singular active; but the 2d sing. imperative has an accented ending; and, on the other hand, the whole series of 1st persons imperative, active and middle, have unaccented endings (this being a characteristic of the subjunctive formation which they represent.

553. The schemes of normal endings, then, are as follows:

554. In general, the rule is followed that an accented ending, if dissyllabic, is accented on its first syllable and the constant union-vowels are regarded, in this respect, as integral parts of the endings. But the 3d pl. ending ate of the pres. indic. middle has in RV. the accent até in a number of verbs (see 613, 685, 699, 718); and an occasional instance is met with in other endings: thus, mahé (see 719, 735).

555. The secondary endings of the second and third persons singular, as consisting of an added consonant without vowel, should regularly (150) be lost whenever the root or stem to which they are to be added itself ends in a consonant. And this rule is in general followed; yet not without exceptions. Thus :

a. A root ending in a dental mute sometimes drops this final mute instead of the added s in the second person; and, on the other hand, a root or stem ending in s sometimes drops this s instead of the added t in the third person in either case, establishing the ordinary relation of s and t in these persons, instead of s and s, or t and t. A similar loss of any other final consonant before the ending is exceedingly rare. For instances, see below, 692.

b. Again, a union-vowel is sometimes introduced before the ending, either a or i see below, 621, 631, 819, 880.

In a few isolated cases in the older language, this is changed to āi: see below, 904 b, 1068.

556. The changes of form which roots and stems undergo in their combinations with these endings will be pointed out in detail below, under the various formations. Here may be simply mentioned in advance, as by far the most important among them, a distinction of stronger and weaker form of stem in large classes of verbs, standing in relation with the accent the stem being of stronger form when the accent falls upon it, or before an accentless ending, and of weaker form when the accent is on the ending.

Of the endings marked as accented in the scheme, the ta of 2d pl. is not infrequently in the Veda treated as unaccented, the tone resting on the stem, which is strengthened. Much less often, the tam of 2d du. is treated in the same way: other endings, only sporadically.

Subjunctive Mode.

557. Of the subjunctive mode (as was pointed out above) only fragments are left in the later or classical language: namely, in the so-called first persons imperative, and in the use (580)