The benedictive mood is found in Sanskrit, although extremely rarely. For verbs in the active voice (parasmaipada), it is formed by adding endings very similar to the athematic optative endings directly to the verb root itself. Essentially, the sibilant -s is inserted between the optative marker -yā and the personal endings. By the action of the rules of sandhi, the second- and third-person benedictive endings are identical to the corresponding optative endings (-yāst turns into -yāt for the third person, and -yāss into yās for the second person).
Middle voice (ātmanepada) benedictives are not found in Classical Sanskrit.
For example, the verb root bhū forms the benedictive thus:
| Active | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Dual | Plural | |
| First Person | bhūyāsam | bhūyāsva | bhūyāsma |
| Second Person | bhūyās | bhūyāstam | bhūyāsta |
| Third Person | bhūyāt | bhūyāstām | bhūyāsus |