Uses of the Modes.
572. Of the three modes, the imperative is the one most distinct and limited in office, and most unchanged in use throughout the whole history of the language. It signifies a command or injunction — an attempt at the exercise of the speaker's will upon some one or something outside of himself.
a. This, however (in Sanskrit as in other languages), is by no means always of the same force; the command shades off into a demand, an exhortation, an entreaty, an expression of earnest desire. The imperative also sometimes signifies an assumption or concession; and occasionally, by pregnant construction, it becomes the expression of something conditional or contingent; but it does not acquire any regular use in dependent-clause-making.
b. The imperative is now and then used in an interrogative sentence: thus, bravīhi ko ‘dyāi ’va mayā viyujyatām (R.) speak! who shall now be separated by me? katham ete guṇavantaḥ kriyantām (H.) how are they to be made virtuous? kasmāi piṇḍaḥ pradīyatām (Vet.) to whom shall the offering be given?
573. The optative appears to have as its primary office the expression of wish or desire; in the oldest language, its prevailing use in independent clauses is that to which the name "optative" properly belongs.
a. But the expression of desire, on the one hand, passes naturally over into that of request or entreaty, so that the optative becomes a softened imperative; and, on the other hand, it comes to signify what is generally desirable or proper, what should or ought to be, and so becomes the mode of prescription; or, yet again, it is weakened into signifying what may or can be, what is likely or usual, and so becomes at last a softened statement of what is.
b. Further, the optative in dependent clauses, with relative pronouns and conjunctions, becomes a regular means of expression of the conditional and contingent, in a wide and increasing variety of uses.
c. The so-called precative forms (567) are ordinarily used in the proper optative sense. But in the later language they are occasionally met with in the other uses of the optative: thus, na hi prapaçyāmi mamā ’panudyād yac chokam (Bh G.) for I do not perceive what should dispel my grief; yad bhūyāsur vibhūtayaḥ (BhP.) that there should be changes. Also rarely with mā: see 579 b.
