The ordinary past tense

Also known as: the imperfect, anadyatana-bhūta (“past action not of today”), laṅ

Basic meaning

The ordinary past tense technically refers to past actions that occurred before today. But in practice, it refers to any past action:

• रामो लङ्काम् अगच्छत्।
  rāmo laṅkām agacchat.
  Rama went to Lanka.
  

• रामः सीताम् अपश्यत्।
  rāmaḥ sītām apaśyat.
  Rama saw Sita.
  

Note the a- at the beginning of each verb:

• गच्छति → अगच्छत्
  gacchati → agacchat
  goes → went
  

Many of the tense-moods that describe past events will add this a- sound to the beginning of the stem.

Endings

Here are the endings of the ordinary past tense as used with the stem naya:

Notice that many of these endings are shortened versions of the present tense endings. Endings that end with -i lose that -i:

• नयति → अनयत्
  nayati → anayat
  

• नयसि → अनयः
  nayasi → anayaḥ
  

• नयामि → अनयम्
  nayāmi → anayam
  

• नयन्ति → अनयन्
  nayanti → anayan
  

And endings that end with the visarga lose that visarga:

• नयावः → अनयाव
  nayāvaḥ → anayāva
  

• नयामः → अनयाम
  nayāmaḥ → anayāma
  

Using verb prefixes

If the verb uses a verb prefix, we add that prefix before the a-:

• परिगच्छति → पर्यगच्छत्
  parigacchati → paryagacchat
  goes around → went around
  

Why does this happen? In early Sanskrit, verb prefixes were ordinary uninflected words that could occur anywhere in the sentence. Here is a simple example:

• परि ग्रामम् अगच्छत्।
  pari grāmam agacchat.
  He went around the village.
  

In later Sanskrit, however, these words are almost always placed just before the verb. And over time, they were treated as a single word:

• परि अगच्छत् → पर्यगच्छत्।
  pari agacchat → paryagacchat.