Sanskrit nouns

Sanskrit is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers (singular, plural, dual). It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative.^[1]

Nouns are grouped into "declensions", which are sets of nouns that form their cases in a similar manner. In this article they are divided into five declensions. The declension to which a noun belongs is determined largely by form.

Cases

Sanskrit nouns have eight cases: nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, and vocative.^[2] Of these eight cases, Pāṇini identified six as kārakas, or accessories to a verb. The six kārakas are the nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental, locative, and ablative cases.^[3] He defined them as follows (Ashtādhyāyi, I.4.24-54):

1. Apādāna (lit. 'take off'): "(that which is) firm when departure (takes place)." This is the equivalent of the ablative case, which signifies a stationary object from which movement proceeds.
2. Sampradāna ('bestowal'): "he whom one aims at with the object". This is equivalent to the dative case, which signifies a recipient in an act of giving or similar acts.
3. Karaṇa ("instrument") "that which effects most." This is equivalent to the instrumental case.
4. Adhikaraṇa ('location'): or "substratum." This is equivalent to the locative case.
5. Karman ('deed'/'object'): "what the agent seeks most to attain". This is equivalent to the accusative case.
6. Kartā ('agent'): "he/that which is independent in action". This is equivalent to the nominative case. (On the basis of Scharfe, 1977: 94)

Pāṇini failed to identify the genitive (Sambandha) and vocative (sambuddha) as cases.^[4] Also he failed to notice that in a sentence like "vRkSas sarpeNa dRSTaH" (the snake saw the tree), the agent 'snake' has the ending of the instrumental case, not of the nominative, and the object 'tree' has nominative ending, not accusative.

Basic noun and adjective declension

The basic scheme of suffixation is given in the table below and is valid for almost all nouns and adjectives. However, according to the gender and the ending consonant/vowel of the uninflected word-stem, there are predetermined rules of compulsory sandhi which would then give the final inflected word. The parentheses give the case-terminations for the neuter gender, the rest are for masculine and feminine gender. Both Devanagari script and IAST transliterations are given.

Sandhi changes make the final 's' identical to a Visarga (ḥ).

a-stems

A-stems (/ə/ or /aː/) comprise the largest class of nouns. As a rule, nouns belonging to this class, with the uninflected stem ending in short-a (/ə/), are either masculine or neuter. Nouns ending in long-A (/aː/) are almost always feminine. A-stem adjectives take the masculine and neuter in short-a (/ə/), and feminine in long-A (/aː/) in their stems. This class is so big because it also comprises the Proto-Indo-European o-stems.

i- and u-stems

Long-vowel stems

ṛ-stems

ṛ-stems are predominantly agental derivatives like dātṛ 'giver', though also include kinship terms like pitṛ́ 'father', mātṛ́ 'mother', and svásṛ 'sister'.

Numerals

The numbers from one to ten are:

1. éka
2. dvá
3. trí
4. chatúra
5. páñcha
6. ṣáṣ
7. saptá, sápta
8. aṣṭhá, áṣṭha
9. náva
10. dáśa

The numbers one through four are declined. Éka is declined like a pronominal adjective, though the dual form does not occur. Dvá appears only in the dual. Trí and catúr are declined irregularly.

See also

• Sanskrit pronouns and determiners

Notes

References