CHAPTER 3

VOCABULARY

भरति bharati ‘he(/she/it) carries’1

बोधति bodhati ‘he wakes up; understands’

स्मरति smarati ‘he remembers’

तिखति likhati ‘he writes’

गच्छति gacchati ‘he goes’

इच्छति icchati ‘he wants’

तिशति viśati ‘he enters’

करोति karoti ‘he does’

हरति harati ‘he takes’

च ca ‘and’ (postposed)2

िा vā ‘or’ (postposed)2

िु tu ‘but’ (postposed)2

न na ‘not’

अत्र atra ‘here’

ित्र tatra ‘there’

पुनर् punar ‘again’

तकम् kim ‘what? why?’; also used at beginning of sentence to indicate a yes/no question

अतप api at beginning of sentence: marks sentence as a yes/ no question

1 The third-person ending can always refer to a man, woman or thing; only the context tells us which
one it is in a specific context. This book will use ‘he’ as shorthand for the more correct, but also
unwieldy, ‘he/she/it’.

2 Postposed means ‘placed after’. This term is used for words that appear after the word before
which they must be translated e.g. in English. For example, गच्छति भरति च gacchati bharati ca,
literally ‘he goes he carries and’ must be translated as ‘he goes and carries’. Also, compare न बोधति
na bodhati ‘he does not understand’ and न िु बोधति na tu bodhati lit. ‘not but he understands’, i.e.
‘but he does not understand’. A postposed element may be put behind the first word in a phrase or
sense unit, or follow later on, but may not come first: अत्र स्मरति ित्र च तिशति atra smarati tatra ca
viśati ‘here he remembers and there he enters’ or अत्र स्मरति ित्र तिशति च atra smarati tatra viśati ca,
but not + अत्र स्मरति च ित्र तिशति atra smarati ca tatra viśati.