On the Eighth Verb-Class in Sanskrit. 13 



labial (e.g. -^/tar : tiirydina, tuturyat ; ^/inar : mumurat, -mnr, 

 infirna ; ypar:ptir 'fulness,' pur 'fortress,' /wr/, pupiirantu, 

 pur- before consonants; -^^var: vurita, urdnas, v ury a ; pita- 

 ram : pit7tr, etc.). There is, then, nothing anomalous in assum- 

 ing that kar, influenced by the suffixal // of the weak forms, 

 changed to kur, especially when we consider that the root- 

 form kur, as indicated by the epic form kurmi, had a ten- 

 dency to establish itself at the side of kar. The loss of the 

 sufhxal -u in the first persons {kur-vds, kur-mds) accords so 

 well with the usual formation of the su-VQxh's> {su-n-vds, su-n- 

 mds), that it is precisely what we should expect. It is harder 

 to explain its loss in the optative active {ktu'-yain),- unless, 

 indeed, we consider this tense as formed directly from kur, 

 like kurnii, i.e. as borrowed from the root-class. Owing, no 

 doubt, to the frequency of its use, kar shows a great mixture 

 of forms (cf. auxiliaries, etc., in other languages). No other 

 verb has a greater variety of stem-forms : kar- {kr-), kara-, krno- 

 {krmi-), karo-, kuru-, kjir- ; and hence there is certainly no 

 necessity to expect its conjugation in the classical period of 

 the language to be of a homogeneous nature. 



Having thus disposed of the verbs assigned to the Eighth 

 class by the Hindu grammarians, little need be said of those 

 arranged along with them by later discoveries, viz. : han, in, 

 and tar. As for Jian, if the form hajtomi, occurring only once, 

 is correct, it is subject to precisely the same treatment as 

 tan, and must be removed with it to the Fifth class. In 

 retains its nasal even outside of the present-system. If this 

 nasal is to be considered as genuine, the conjugation of in in 

 analogy with roots in -an would not be any more anomalous 

 than the inflection of nominal z'«-stems in analogy with an- 

 stems. As for tar, we have only the doubtful and anomalous 

 form tarutc, occurring once in the Rig -Veda. It is too prob- 

 lematic to offer any grounds for a serious argument. 



The result of the preceding investigation would then be 

 that of the thirteen roots which have been referred to the 



29 



