VII. VERB. FORMATION OF THE MOODS. 317 are attached to the latter. In the a- conjugation - is added (coalescing with a to e) throughout; in other verbs -7 is added in the middle only, and -yá (often to be read as -iá) in the active only". Roots ending in a usually change that vowel to e before -yā: e. g. de-yam (perhaps to be explained as dāijam)² I would give'. But à is sometimes retained, as in ya-yam 'I would go'. b. The endings are the secondary ones. There are, however, some irregularities in the 1. sing. and the 3. pl. 1. The 3. pl. mid. always takes -ran instead of -an. 2. The 3. pl. act. always takes -ur, before which the à of -ya is dropped, while in the a- con- jugation y is interposed between e ³ and -ur. 3. The 1. sing. mid, has the peculiar ending a with y interposed between it and the modal-. 4. The 1. sing. act. of the a- con- jugation attaches -am instead of -m (the termination -em being unknown), interposing y between it and the e3 of the stem. d. a. The endings of the optative in combination with the modal suffix are accordingly the following: I. Graded conjugation. sing. I. -ì-y-á 2. -i-thás 3. -7 - tả 2. a- conjugation. I. -e-y-a 2. -e-thās sing. 1. -ya-m 2. -ya-s 3. -ya-t I. -e-y-am 2. -e-s 3. -e-t Active du. -ya-va -ya-tam -ya-tām -e-va -e-tam -e-tām pl. -ya-ma -ya-ta -y-úr -e-ma -e-ta Middle du. -T-váhi ¹ On the accentuation cp. above 9 and 24 a. 2 Cp. BRUGMANN, KG. 555 (bottom). 3 The e (for a) is here probably dne to the inflnence of the other forms -es, -et, etc.: BRUGMANN, KG. 728. -i-y-áthām -í-y-átām -e-vahi -e-y-athām -e-y-ātām pl. -i-máhi -i-dhvám -i-r-án -e-mahi -e-dhvam -e-y-ur 3. -e-ta -e-r-an. 417. Precative. This is a form of the optative which adds an -s after the modal suffix in several persons, and is made almost exclusively from aorist stems. In the RV. there occur a few forms of the precative in three persons (1. 3. sing., 1. pl.) active, and in two persons (2. 3. sing.) middle; thus active: 1. sing. bhu-ya-s-am (aor.) 'may I be'; 3. sing. as-yas (for
- as-ya-s-t) 'may he attain' (aor.); babhū-yās 'may he be' (perf.); 1.pl. kri-ya-s-ma
'may we do' (aor.); middle: 2. sing. mam-s-T-s-thás (aor.) and 3. sing. mam-s-i-s-ta (aor.), from man- 'think'. 418. Imperative. This mood has no mood-sign of its own, as all the first persons are subjunctives and the second and third persons are mostly old injunctives. The purely injunctive forms are the 2. 3. du. and 2. pl. active and middle, ending in -tam, -tām, -ta; -āthām, -ātām, -dhvam. The 3. sing. pl. act. in tut and -antus, and the 3. pl. mid. in -antam5 may be modi- fications of injunctives. The imperative has, however, distinctive forms of its own in the 2. sing. act.: -dhi, -hi, -āna, -tāt; and in the middle: 2. sing. -sva and 3. sing. -tām or -ām. a. The 2. sing. act. in the a-conjugation has no ending, employing the bare stem (like the vocative singular of the a- declension); e. g. bhára 'support'; nesa 'lead' (aor. of Vni-). In the graded conjugation, when a strong and weak stem are distinguished, the ending is attached to the latter: -dhi is added after both consonants and vowels, -hi (the later form of -dhi) after vowels only; thus ad-dhí 'eat'; śru-dhi and śṛṇu-dhi 'hear'; i-hí 'go', jagr-hi 'awake', pipr-hi 'save', śrnu-hi 'hear'. In the nā- class, -hi is added 4 Cp. BRUGMANN, KG. 729, 1; IF. 18, 71; DELBRÜCK, Vergl. Syntax 2, p. 357. 5 The ending -antu and -antām lose their n under the same conditions as -anti (p. 314, note 8).
