पृष्ठम्:A Sanskrit primer (1901).djvu/२९

Introduction. 13 as it is sometimes expressed, ma is its own guna; n à remains unchanged for both guna and orddhi. 53. The guņa-increment does not, except in exceedingly rare instances, take place in a beavy syllable (see § 48) ending in a consonant: e. g., faq cit may become a cet, and it ni may become â ne; but fara cint or fara nind or sta jāv may not become चेन्त्_cent or नेन्द् nend or जैव jee. 54. Other changes of vowels and consonants occur very fre- quently, in the making-up of single words from roots, by means of suffixes and endings, and in the formation of compound words by the union of two or more stems - a process of the very greatest frequency in Sanskrit. Furthermore, in the form in wbich the language is handed down to us by the literature, the words composing a sentence or paragraph are adapted to and combined with each other by nearly the same rules as those wbich govern the making of compounds, so that it is impossible to take apart and understand the simplest sentence in Sanskrit without understanding those rules. The most important of the rules for such combination will be given piecemeal in the lessons. no Roots and Stems. 55. A knowledge on the student's part of the meaning and application of the terms root, stem, personal ending, etc., is pre- supposed. The formative processes by which both inflectional forms and derivative stems are made, by the addition of endings to bases and roots, are more regular and transparent in Sanskrit than in any other Indo-European language.* In the present work, which aims preeminently to give the student considerable practical acquaintance with the language within a brief compass of lessons, not every given form will be explained by analysis. But wherever any explanation of forms is given, it will of course be according to this method. Univ Calif - Digitized by Microsoft ®