Verbal Governing Compounds with an Accusative-Marked First Member of the Type agnim-indhá-: From Vedic to Pāṇini

Abstract

The verbal governing compound type agnim-indhá- ‘kindling the fire’, with an accusative-marked first member and a second member built to the present stem with the suffix -á-, is attested since the Vedic period and continues to enjoy a certain degree of productivity in later periods. In addition to this type, there are also related verbal governing compounds in Vedic and later Sanskrit of the type khajaṃ-kará- ‘making a battle-din’, in which the second member is not built to the present stem. After overviewing the early Vedic evidence for these types, we will examine Pāṇini’s approach in deriving these compounds. Pāṇini generally derives such compounds built to a present stem with the sārvadhātuka affix KHaŚ and those which show some discrepancy with the present stem with the affix KHaC. The motivation for introducing these affixes is clear in the majority of cases but there remain some forms within the group of KHaC-derivatives for which Pāṇini’s choice of KHaC over KHaŚ is not completely clear. Importantly, some sūtras within the KHaC group explicitly provide for the derivation of names (sañjñā), suggesting that a link with the present stem may have been less intuitive in such cases.

Keywords

• Compounds. Indian grammatical tradition. Pāṇini. Sanskrit. Vedic