Case 1: The Subject

Also known as: the nominative case, prathamā vibhakti ("first case")

Introduction

Until now, all of the sentences we've made have been missing a subject. This is a problem! If we just have the word gacchati, how can we tell who goes? It could be a man or a horse or an elephant — it could even be a fruit, for all we know!

We need a way to add a subject to the sentence. Fortunately, Sanskrit gives us a way to do so. In each example below, the highlighted word is the subject of the sentence.

• नरः गच्छति

  naraḥ gacchati

  The man goes.

• वीराः यच्छन्ति

  vīrāḥ yacchanti

  The heroes restrain.

For simplicity, let's call this case the subject case. This is the first noun case we've seen so far, so we can also call this case case 1 for short.

Inflection

Let's look at the pattern for the basic noun gaja, which means "elephant."

What you see above is a full description of gaja's behavior in case 1. The different numbers are across the top, and the different cases are along the side. The noun's stem and gender are at the top of the table.

The endings featured above shouldn't give you too much trouble. If they do, don't spend too much time on them; the exercises will give you more practice.

Devanagari

Common Consonants 6 - 10

Now, let's look at five more common consonants:

देवनागरी

IAST

स

sa

द

da

य

ya

प

pa

क

ka

Exceptions for र

There are two exceptions you should know for र:

देवनागरी

IAST

रु

ru

रू

rū