Sanskrit nouns


is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders and three numbers. It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative.
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. 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. He defined them as follows :
  1. Apādāna : " firm when departure." This is the equivalent of the ablative case, which signifies a stationary object from which movement proceeds.
  2. Sampradāna : "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. ' "that which effects most." This is equivalent to the instrumental case.
  4. ' : or "substratum." This is equivalent to the locative case.
  5. Karman : "what the agent seeks most to attain". This is equivalent to the accusative case.
  6. Kartā : "he/that which is independent in action". This is equivalent to the nominative case.
Pāṇini did not identify the genitive and vocative as cases, in the term of Karakas.

Basic noun and adjective declension

The basic scheme of suffixation is given in the table below and applies to many nouns and adjectives. However, according to the gender and the final consonant or vowel of the uninflected word-stem, there are sandhi rules dictating the form of the inflected word.

a-stems

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

i- and u-stems

This class contain nouns of all three genders, but its most defining features are best preserved in the masculine forms. Feminine nouns may borrow part of their singular endings from the -ī and -ū classes, and neuters regularly use a derived consonant stem in -in or -un. They are considered part of this class by traditional grammars for etymological reasons, as well as the fact that adjectives in -i and -u complete their paradigms suppletively for the three genders with these forms.

Long-vowel stems

These nouns, mostly feminine, have stems in -ā, -ī, -ū and genitive singular in ās. The -ī and -ū classes decline identically, while the -ā class have different dual and vocative forms, as well as inserts either -āy- or -ay- before oblique case endings beginning with vowels.
Many one-syllable root nouns in long vowels are inflected in principle as consonant stems, but the feminine ones may also use the longer singular endings of the class proper, in a similar way short -i and -u stem feminines do.

ṛ-stems

ṛ-stems are predominantly agental derivatives like dātṛ 'giver', though also include kinship terms like pitṛ 'father', mātṛ 'mother', and svasṛ 'sister'. The neuter equivalents of derivative agental nouns once again form secondary stems in -n, as in the -i and -u classes.
A single irregular noun, sakhi 'friend', has a stem apparently in -i but declines similarly to this class:
SingularDualPlural
Nominativesakhāsakhāyausakhāyas
Accusativesakhāyamsakhāyausakhīn
Instrumentalsakhyāsakhibhyāmsakhibhis
Dativesakhyesakhibhyāmsakhibhyas
Ablativesakhyursakhibhyāmsakhibhyas
Genitivesakhyursakhyossakhīnām
Locativesakhyau, sakhayisakhyossakhiṣu
Vocativesakhesakhāyausakhāyas

Consonant stems

Consonant stem nouns may have up to 3 different stems, as well as two special forms.
  1. A special lengthened form for the masculine/feminine nominative singular
  2. A special lengthened and/or nasalized form for the neuter nom/acc. plural
  3. A strong stem, referred to by traditional grammars as aṅga, used for mas/fem. sing. acc, dual nom/acc and plur. nom.
  4. A medium stem pada, used with oblique cases with consonant endings, as well as the neuter nom/acc. sing.
  5. A weak stem bha, used everywhere else.
One or more of these stems may be identical for some words, but this is generally not regularly predictable from either the nominative singular or the citation form stem.
The case endings themselves are the regular ones listed in the beginning of the page.
Inflection example of words with only one stem; note that the neuter plural still use the special form.
Example of words with different stems:
  1. rājā, rājñas, rājānas, rājabhis
  2. dyaus, divas, divas, dyubhis
  3. karma, karmaṇas, karmāṇi
The masculine vocative can be a somewhat peculiar case. For the most part, if either the masc.nom.sing. or the aṅga stem ends with -n or some consonant cluster thereof, the vocative is this stem with a short vowel immediately before the -n; and in most other nouns it is identical to the nom.sing. As an example of exception, the word cited as pathin "path" has the forms panthās, pathas, panthānas, pathibhis but vocative panthās instead of the expected panthan; a different consonant ending in the nom.sing. has taken precedence when it is not a cluster starting with n.

Adjectives

a-stem adjectives

This large class uses the -as, -am inflection for the masculine and neuter, and either ā or ī for the feminine depending on the word.
Kāntas, -ā, -am mentioned above is one of such adjectives that use ā for feminine; others, such as sundaras, -ī, -am, use ī in its place.

Pure i- and u-stem adjectives

This class consists of a number of primary adjectives such as bahus, -us, -u "many" and śucis, -is, -i "pure", as well as ones adapted from nouns like bahuvrīhis. They are inflected like the i- and u-stem nouns described above; occasionally the feminine u may gain an additional ī and become vī.
Nouns originally in long -ī, -ū, when used as adjectives, tend to simply extend the feminine forms to masculine. In the neuter however, it is substituted with the same short -i, -u.

Pure consonant stem adjectives

The majority of this class is adapted from simple consonant stem nouns. Masculine and feminine genders share the same forms, and the neuter may take a strengthened plural form by analogy, or sometimes not use it. The oblique cases are the same for all genders.
The neuter noun āyus, -ṣas, -ūṃṣi "life, vitality" and the feminine verbal root-noun vṛt, vṛtas "turn, fold", when adopted as adjectives such as in the compounds dīrghāyus "longlived" and trivṛt "threefold", employ analogously the following adaptations:

Consonant and ī-stem adjectives

These adjectives use consonant stem forms for the masculine and neuter genders, and a secondary ī-suffix for the feminine.
The masculine exhibits the singular special form mahān and the aṅga form mahāntas; the feminine builds on the bha form mahatī; and the neuter cites the pada form mahat.
In present participles of the thematic verb classes, the feminine ī-suffix along with the homophonic neuter dual is attached to the aṅga stem in -nt. In the athematic classes, it may be attached to either; in the reduplicated athematic class no aṅga-based forms are used at all, so it is again attached to the -t stem.

Comparatives and superlatives

Primary derivation

A small closed class of comparatives and superlatives are directly formed on adjectival roots, after dropping the original stem suffix. The comparative takes the suffix -īyān, yasī, yas, which declines as a consonant- and ī-stem adjective; the superlative takes -iṣṭhaḥ, ā, am. The root is strengthened to the guṇa grade.
In some adjectives the original form of the root has been obscured by internal sandhi, making the outcome somewhat irregular. Thus:
The secondary suffixes of comparison are -taraḥ, ā, am for comparative and -tamaḥ, ā, am for superlative. They are appended to the inflectional base, with no modification of the stem. Usually the pada stem is used for consonant-stem adjectives, but those in a simple -n sometimes retain it.
The numbers from one to ten are:
  1. eka
  2. dva
  3. trayas
  4. catur
  5. pañcha
  6. ṣaṣ
  7. sapta
  8. aṣṭa
  9. nava
  10. daśa
The numbers one through four are declined. Eka is declined like a pronominal adjective, though the dual form does not occur. Dva appears only in the dual. Tri and catur are declined irregularly.