A SANSKRIT GRAMMAR, INCLUDING BOTH THE CLASSICAL LANGUAGE, AND THE BY WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY, PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN YALE COLLEGE, NEW-HAVEN; BREITKOPF AND HÄRTEL. LONDON, TRÜBNER & Co. 57 AND 59, LUDGATE HILL, E. C. 8. ENTD STA. HALL. 1879. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by W. D. Whitney in the office Ber W623 copia (The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.) ་་་ Printers: Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig. PREFACE. It was in June, 1875, as I chanced to be for a day or two in Leipzig, that I was unexpectedly invited to prepare the Sanskrit grammar for the Indo-European series projected by Messrs. Breitkopf and Härtel. After some consideration, and consultation with friends, I accepted the task, and have since devoted to it what time could be spared from regular duties, after the satisfaction of engagements earlier formed. If the delay seems a long one, it was nevertheless unavoidable; and I would gladly, in the interest of the work itself, have made it still longer. In every such case, it is necessary to make a compromise between measurably satisfying a present pressing need, and doing the subject fuller justice at the cost of more time; and it seemed as if the call for a Sanskrit grammar on a somewhat different plan from those already in use excellent as some of these in many respects are was urgent enough to recommend a speedy completion of the work begun. The objects had especially in view in the preparation of this grammar have been the following: To make a presentation of the facts of the language primarily as they show themselves in use in the literature, and only secondarily as they are laid down by the native grammarians. The earliest European grammars were by the necessity of the case chiefly founded on their native predecessors; and a traditional method was thus established which has been perhaps somewhat too closely adhered to, at the expense of clearness and of proportion, as well as of scientific truth. Accordingly, my attention has not been directed toward a profounder study of the grammatical science of the Hindu schools: their teachings I have been contented to take as already reported to Western learners in the existing Western grammars. To include also in the presentation the forms and constructions of the older language, as exhibited in the Veda and the Brahmana. Grassmann's excellent Index-Vocabulary to the Rig-Veda, and my own manuscript one to the AtharvaVeda (which I hope soon to be able to make public', gave me in full detail the great mass of Vedic material; and this, with some assistance from pupils and friends, I have sought to complete, as far as the circumstances permitted, from the other Vedic texts and from the various works of the Brahmaņa period, both printed and manuscript. To treat the language throughout as an accented one, omitting nothing of what is known respecting the nature of the Sanskrit accent, its changes in combination and inflection, and the tone of individual words being, in all this, necessarily dependent especially upon the material presented by the older accentuated texts. To cast all statements, classifications, and so on, into a form consistent with the teachings of linguistic science. In doing this, it has been necessary to discard a few of the long-used and familiar divisions and terms of Sanskrit grammar for example, the classification and nomenclature of "special tenses" and "general tenses" which is so indefensible that one can only wonder at its having maintained itself so long, the order and terminology of the conjugation-classes, the separation in treatment of the facts of internal and external euphonic combination, and the like. But care has been taken to facilitate the transition from the old to the new; and the changes, it is believed, will commend themselves. to unqualified acceptance. It has been sought also to help an appreciation of the character of the language by putting its facts as far as possible into a statistical form. In this respect the native grammar is especially deficient and misleading. Regard has been constantly had to the practical needs. of the learner of the language, and it has been attempted, by due arrangement and by the use of different sizes of type, to make the work as usable by one whose object it is to acquire a knowledge of the classical Sanskrit alone as those are in which the earlier forms are not included. The custom of transliterating all Sanskrit words into European characters, which has become usual in European Sanskrit grammars, is, as a matter of course, retained throughout; and, because of the difficulty of setting even a small Sanskrit type with anything but a large European, it is practiced alone in the smaller sizes. While the treatment of the facts of the language has thus been made a historical one, within the limits of the language itself, I have not ventured to make it comparative, by bringing in the analogous forms and processes of other related languages. To do this, in addition to all that was attempted beside, would have extended the work, both in content and in time of preparation, far beyond the limits assigned to it. And, having decided to leave out this element, I have done so consistently throughout. Explanations of the origin of forms have also been avoided, for the same reason and for others, which hardly call for statement. A grammar is necessarily in great part founded on its predecessors, and it would be in vain to attempt an acknowledgment in detail of all the aid received from other scholars. I have had at hand always especially the very scholarly and reliable brief summary of Kielhorn, the full and excellent work of Monier Williams, the smaller grammar of Bopp a wonder of learning and method for the time when it was prepared, and the volumes of Benfey and Müller. As regards the material of the language, no other aid, of course. has been at all comparable with the great Petersburg lexicon of Böhtlingk and Roth, the existence of which gives by itself a new character to all investigations of the Sanskrit language. What I have not found there or in the special collections made by myself or by others for me, I have called below "not quotable" a provisional designation, necessarily liable to correction in detail by the results of further researches. For what concerns the verb, its forms and their classification and uses, I have had, as every one |