b. A condensed statement of all the varieties of ending for each person and number here follows.
543. Singular: First person, a. The primary ending in the active is mi. The subjunctive, however (later imperative), has ni instead; and in the oldest Veda this ni is sometimes wanting, and the person ends in ā (as if the ni of āni were dropped). The secondary ending is properly m; but to this m an a has come to be so persistently prefixed, appearing regularly where the tense-stem does not itself end in a (vam for varm or varam in RV., once, and abhūm MS., avadhīm TS. etc., sanem TB., are rare anomalies), that it is convenient to reckon am as ending, rather than m. But the perfect tense has neither mi nor m; its ending is simply a (sometimes ā: 248 c); or, from ā-roots, āu.
b. The primary middle ending, according to the analogy of the other persons, would be regularly me. But no tense or mode, at any period of the language, shows any relic whatever of a m in this person; the primary ending, present as well as perfect, from a-stems and others alike, is e; and to it corresponds i as secondary ending, which blends with the final of an a-stem to e. The optative has, however, a instead of i; and in the subjunctive (later imperative) appears āi for e.
544. Second person. a. In the active, the primary ending is si, which is shortened to s as secondary; as to the loss of this s after a final radical consonant, see below, 555. But the perfect and the imperative desert here entirely the analogy of the other forms. The perfect ending is invariably tha (or thā: 248 c). The imperative is far less regular. The fullest form of its ending is dhi; which, however, is more often reduced to hi; and in the great majority of verbs (including all a-stems, at every period of the language) no ending is present, but the bare stem stands as personal form. In a very small class of verbs (722–3), āna is the ending. There is also an alternative ending tāt; and this is even used sporadically in other persons of the imperative (see below, 570–1).
b. In the middle voice, the primary ending, both present and perfect, is se. The secondary stands in no apparent relation to this, being thās; and in the imperative is found only sva (or svā: 248 c), which in the Veda is not seldom to be read as sua. In the older language, se is sometimes strengthened to sāi in the subjunctive.
545. Third person. a. The active primary ending is ti; the secondary, t; as to the loss of the latter after a final radical consonant, see below, 555. But in the imperative appears instead the peculiar ending tu; and in the perfect no characteristic consonant is present, and the third person has the same ending as the first.
b. The primary middle ending is te, with ta as corresponding secondary. In the older language, te is often strengthened to tāi in
