Physicist, Tinkerer
Nouns and Adjectives in Sanskrit are classified by three features: case, number, and gender. They are also used to form a rich variety of compound word structures.
Sanskrit is a strongly inflected language. This means that nouns and adjectives change their form depending on their function in a sentence. The form that a word takes is called its case.
English words usually don’t change their form since we use the word order to tell us the function. In the sentence “The man sees an elephant”, “The man” is the subject and “an elephant” is the object. Clearly “An elephant sees the man” does not have the same meaning! The word order is very important in the meaning of the sentence.
Sanskrit is different. Instead of relying on word order, Sanskrit changes the form of the word to tell you whether it is the object, the subject, or something else entirely. We say that Sanskrit inflects its nouns for case.
Suppose I want to say “The man sees an elephant” in Sanskrit. This would be naraḥ paśyati gajam. Naraḥ is the subject form of nara meaning “man”, and gajam is the object form of gaja meaning elephant. Paśyati means sees.
If we flip the order and say gajam paśyati naraḥ, it does not change the meaning, since the function of the words is still the same. Elephant is still in its object form and man is still in its subject. In fact, every ordering will have the same meaning, as long as the words do not change their form.
How many cases are there? It depends on the language. English has none as we mentioned, since it uses word order. German and Greek have four. Russian and Latin have six. Sanskrit has eight. These are the eight functions a noun can have in Sanskrit, along with the abbreviation used in this translation to identify it:
| Name | Abbreviation | Explanation | Example word: nara |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | nom. | This noun is the subject | naraḥ |
| Accusative | acc. | This noun is the object | naram |
| Instrumental | inst. | This noun is the instrument by which something is done | nareṇa |
| Dative | dat. | This noun is the recipient of the action - i.e. the action is done to/for this noun | narāya |
| Ablative | abl. | This noun is the origin of the action - i.e. the action comes from this noun | narāt |
| Genitive | gen. | This noun is the possessor of something | narasya |
| Locative | loc. | This noun is the location, i.e. something is in or on this noun | nare |
| Vocative | voc. | This noun is being addressed or called | nara |
Adjectives also change their form, and will be in the same case as the word they are describing. If we want to say “the great man”, we would say mahān naraḥ. Mahān is the nominative form of mahat meaning great and agrees with the nominative naraḥ. If however we want to say for the great man, we would say mahate narāya, with both words in their dative form.
Unlike in English, adjectives and the words they describe don’t technically need to be next to each other in sentences. For example, if we want to say the elephant (gaja) sees the great man, we could say
gajaḥ paśyati mahantaṃ naram
But we could also say
mahantaṃ gajaḥ paśyati naram
Since mahantaṃ is an accusative form it must agree with an accusative noun. In this sentence only naram meets that condition so we know it must agree with that, independent of where it is in the sentence. This once again shows how flexible word order is in Sanskrit compared with English.
Sanskrit nouns and adjectives have three numbers: singular, plural, and dual. Modern languages typically have only singular and plural nouns, but some such as Arabic also have a dual. As the name suggests, the dual is a form used when referring to two of something. Let’s see how our sample word nara behaves in its singular, dual, and plural forms.
| Case | Singular | Dual | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | naraḥ | narau | narāḥ |
| Accusative | naram | narau | narān |
| Instrumental | nareṇa | narābhyām | naraiḥ |
| Dative | narāya | narābhyām | narebhyaḥ |
| Ablative | narāt | narābhyām | narebhyaḥ |
| Genitive | narasya | narayoḥ | narāṇām |
| Locative | nare | narayoḥ | nareṣu |
| Vocative | nara | narau | narāḥ |
The labels used in the translation to signify number are sg, dual, and pl.
Just as with case, adjectives have to agree with the number of the word they describe. We saw above mahān naraḥ is “great man”. “Great men” would be mahanto narāḥ. Similarly, while “for the great man” was mahate narāya, “for the great men” is mahadbhyo narebhyaḥ *.
The final classification of Sanskrit nouns and adjectives is gender. There are three genders in Sanskrit, like in modern Russian and Greek. These are masculine, feminine, and neuter. In this translation, they are abbreviated as m, f, n respectively.
Nouns of different genders have different declension patterns for the various cases. Here is an example of a feminine noun, vidyā (knowledge), and a neuter noun phalam (fruit).
| Case | Singular | Dual | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | vidyā | vidye | vidyāḥ |
| Accusative | vidyām | vidye | vidyāḥ |
| Instrumental | vidyayā | vidyābhyām | vidyābhiḥ |
| Dative | vidyāyai | vidyābhyām | vidyābhyaḥ |
| Ablative | vidyāyāḥ | vidyābhyām | vidyābhyaḥ |
| Genitive | vidyāyāḥ | vidyāyoḥ | vidyāṇām |
| Locative | vidyāyām | vidyāyoḥ | vidyāsu |
| Vocative | vidye | vidye | vidyāḥ |
Here is phalam as an example of a neuter noun
| Case | Singular | Dual | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | phalam | phale | phalani |
| Accusative | phalam | phale | phalani |
| Instrumental | phalena | phalābhyām | phalaiḥ |
| Dative | phalāya | phalābhyām | phalebhyaḥ |
| Ablative | phalāt | phalābhyām | phalebhyaḥ |
| Genitive | phalasya | phalayoḥ | phalāṇām |
| Locative | phale | phalayoḥ | phaleṣu |
| Vocative | phala | phale | phalani |
One of the most common features of Sanskrit nouns is fusing them together to form compounds, much like German does. Compound words are a very central part of the language and it is very important to be able to recognise them.
The Gītā, for example, is rich in compound forms such as sarvakarmaphalatyāgam which is formed from four words - three nouns and and adjective. Quite literally translated, this compound refers to the act of abandoning the fruits of all actions.
As the example above might suggest, there is no limit to how many words you can fuse together as long as they obey the strict rules of compounding. These are the main types of Sanskrit compounds:
Tatpuruṣa
The tatpuruṣa is a compound of two or more terms in which the first part modifies the second part in some way. More specifically, a tatpuruṣa X+Y is a noun Y related to noun X by a case relationship. In this translation tatpuruṣa compounds are marked tp.
English has plenty of tatpuruṣa compounds. An example is “bookcase”, which is a compound of book and case. More specifically, a bookcase is a case of books. If English had case, the case relationship between the two nouns here would be a genitive one.
An example of a tatpuruṣa that is used today as a name in India is devadāsa. This is the combination of deva + dāsa which literally is “God servant” but is read as servant of God.
One very important thing to note is that in a tatpuruṣa X+Y, X is in its pure stem form, i.e. it has no case marking. Y however does have case marking and the whole compound noun gets its case, number, and gender from Y.
Since the first part of the tatpuruṣa does not have case marking, this means that we need context to determine which case relationship was intended between X and Y. Quite often it is genitive, i.e. Y of X. Other relationships are possible though - here are some other examples:
jaya-prepsu = victory-desiring (accusative)
deva-datta = by gods-given (instrumental)
Tatpuruṣa can be longer than two words. We gave the example above of sarvakarmaphalatyāgam. Breaking it down gives:
sarva-karma-phala-tyāgam
all-action-fruit-abandonment
Abandonment of fruit of all action
Without any other context, the case relationship that makes the most sense is genitive. In some other context however, this compound may have some other meaning. An example could be abandonment by fruit from all action, if we instead interpret phala as instrumental and karma as ablative. With tatpuruṣa compounds it all depends on the context they are in.