The Avyayībhāva

Introduction

Here, we'll study one more type of compound. This is the avyayībhāva, or "uninflected form." As you might guess from the name of this type, avyayibhava compounds are uninflected. All of them are adverbs, and their first members are uninflected words.

• अनु + रूप → अनुरूप → अनुरूपम्

  anu + rūpa → anurūpa → anurūpam

  after + form → "after-form," according to a form → accordingly, naturally

  (This prefix is featured on the next page.)

Note that the avyayibhava resembles tatpurusha compounds with verb prefixes, like anukūla. Such tatpurusha compounds, if they are adjectives, can usually become avyayibhava compounds.

The avyayibhava is said to emphasize the first member of the compound more than the second. How, then, should we place the compound in our chart? Well, anurūpam expresses an abstract idea that best matches the sense of the prefix anu, so the first word represents the idea of the compound. But anurūpam is not a sort of rūpam; the word rūpa here just serves to qualify the nature of anu. For that reason, the first word is the main idea and the second is the qualifier.

In Vedic Sanskrit, verb prefixes are independent words that can appear almost anywhere in the sentence. In later Sanskrit, these independent words became bound to the verb. Some of these words, however, survive in certain circumstances. For example, ā used with case 5 express a limit "up to" something, and anu used with case 2 expressed what occurs "after" something. We'll study these special uses much later in the guide; they don't appear very often.

Tatpurusha compounds with verb roots

Also known as: upapada-samāsa

The second word of a tatpurusha can be an ordinary verb root. Consider the compound analysis below:

• भुजैर् गच्छतीति भुजगः

  bhujair gacchatīti bhujagaḥ

  "It goes with coils", i.e. a snake

Many roots are used this way. Generally, these roots weaken as much as possible; gam becomes ga, sthā becomes stha, and so on. Some roots gain an extra consonant, but we will avoid studying such roots until we learn more about the class of nouns whose stems end in consonants.