The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit

NOUN STEM GRADATION

Chapter 15 introduced dental stems and the pattern of internal sandhi contained in them. Stems ending in -vant, -mant and -ant also end in a -t and thus display the same internal sandhi patterns as other t-stems. They also use the same endings as all other consonant stems. Yet they have one further feature: they all show gradation of the stem.

Apart from sandhi of their final sounds, noun stems such as मरुत्- ‘wind’ or आपद्- ‘accident’ do not change their form across the various cases. Nouns with stem gradation, on the other hand, have a strong and a weak form of the stem, differentiated usually by guṇa vs. zero grade of their last vowel. (The principle behind this is the same as that behind the stem changes of athematic verbs.) Of stems in -mant-, -vant- or -ant-, the weak grade forms end in -mat-, -vat- and -at- respectively (< *mṇt etc. –› Chapter 7 on the appearance of nasals between consonants). The strong forms are found in the MASC NOMVOCACC SG and Du and the NOMVOC PL. All other forms are weak. Examples follow immediately below.

MORE DENTAL STEMS: VANT-I MANT-STEMS; TAVANT-PARTICIPLES; (A)NT-PARTICIPLES; MAHĀNT-

vant/mant-stems are formed by adding either one of these suffixes (more frequently -vant-) to a noun to express possession: गुण-वन्त्-, for example, literally means ‘having (good) qualities’, and thus ‘virtuous’; धी-मन्त्- literally means ‘having thought’, and thus ‘intelligent’. Both types are declined according to the following pattern:

Note:

• – The strong cases are shaded. (The NTR NOMVOCACC PL are actually not strong, but contain the nasal we saw in those cases elsewhere; –› e.g. s-stem मनांसि or t-stem जगन्ति.)

• – Notice the NOM SG MASC ending in -ān: the word-final consonant cluster *-nt(s) is reduced to just -n, and the preceding -a- is lengthened in compensation. (–› Chapter 15 on the Sanskrit treatment of word-final consonant clusters.)

• – In the VOC SG, which, like most other vocatives, consists of just the stem, final -t is dropped without any compensation.