possessive sū́ryatejas possessing the brightness of the sun; yajñakāmá desire of sacrifice becomes yajñákāma having desire of sacrifice; the descriptive bṛhadratha great chariot becomes the possessive bṛhádratha having great chariots; áhasta not hand becomes ahastá handless; durgandhi ill savor becomes durgándhi of ill savor; and so on.
b. A copulative compound is not convertible into an adjective directly, any more than is a simple noun, but requires, like the latter, a possessive suffix or other means: e. g. vāgghastavant, doṣaguṇin, rajastamaska, açirogrīva, anṛgyajus. A very small number of exceptions, however, are found: thus, somendrá (TS.), stómapṛṣṭha (VS. TS.), hastyṛ̀ṣabha (ÇB.), dāsīniṣka (ChU.), and, later, cakramusala, sadānanda, saccidānanda, sān̄khyayoga (as n. pr.), balābala, bhūtabhāutika.
c. The name given by the native grammarians to the possessive compounds is bahuvrīhi: the word is an example of the class, meaning possessing much rice.
d. The name "relative", instead of possessive, sometimes applied to this class, is an utter misnomer; since, though the meaning of such a compound (as of any attributive word) is easily cast into a relative form, its essential character lies in the possessive verb which has nevertheless to be added, or in the possessive case of the relative which must be used: thus, mahākavi and āyurdā, descriptive and dependent, are "relative" also, who is a great poet, and that is life-giving, but bṛhadratha, possessive, means who has a great chariot, or whose is a great chariot.
1294. a. That a noun, simple or compound, should be added to another noun, in an appositive way, with a value virtually attributive, and that such nouns should occasionally gain by frequent association and application an adjective form also, is natural enough, and occurs in many languages; the peculiarity of the Sanskrit formation lies in two things. First, that such use should have become a perfectly regular and indefinitely extensible one in the case of compounded words, so that any compound with noun-final may be turned without alteration into an adjective, while to a simple noun must be added an adjective-making suffix in order to adapt it to adjective use: for example, that while hasta must become hastin and bāhu must become bāhumant, hiraṇyahasta and mahābāhu change from noun to adjective value with no added ending. And second, that the relation of the qualified noun to the compound should have come to be so generally that of possession, not of likeness, nor of appurtenance, nor of any other relation which is as naturally involved in such a construction: that we may only say, for example, mahābāhuḥ puruṣaḥ man with great arms, and not also mahābāhur maṇiḥ jewel for a great arm, or mahābāhavaḥ çākhāḥ branches like great arms.
b. There are, however, in the older language a few derivative adjective compounds which imply the relation of appurtenance rather than that of possession, and which are with probability to be viewed as survivals of a state of things antecedent to the specialization of the general class as
