This chapter discusses various uses of the pronouns introduced in Chapter 22.
RELATIVE CLAUSES
A relative clause offers further information about a word in the main clause. In the following examples, relative clauses are underlined, while the word they refer to (their ‘head’) is given in italics.
The girl who is playing with the cat is my sister.
The boy from whom I got this book is my friend.
I have already finished the chocolate that we bought yesterday.
The word that a relative clause refers to is called the head of that clause. Notice how in all three examples the head precedes the relative clause.
Sanskrit relative clauses have the same function as their English counterparts. Yet there are three formal differences:
1) The head noun is frequently included in the relative clause itself, and the relative clause as a whole may precede the main clause.
2) The relative pronoun य- (in any of its forms) is usually picked up by a form of the demonstrative pronoun सः/तद्- ‘he, this one’ etc. in the main clause.
3) The relative and demonstrative pronouns do not need to stand at the beginning of their clauses.
Thus, the English sentences above would typically look as follows in Sanskrit:
Which girl is playing with the cat, she is my sister.
From which boy I got this book, he is my friend.
Which chocolate we bought yesterday, that I have already finished.
Or also:
We bought yesterday which chocolate, that I have already finished.
Which we bought yesterday chocolate, that I have already finished.
And so on.
Two actual examples:
य आत्मनापत्रपते भृशं नरः । (आत्मना अपत्रपते lit. ‘turns away from himself ‘ –› ‘is modest about himself’– (INDC) ‘very, especially’ –
स सर्वलोकस्य गुरुर्भवत्युत ॥ गुरुः ‘teacher’ (NOM SG) – उत ‘also, even’)
‘The man who is especially modest about himself becomes the teacher of the whole world.’
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