Adverbs

Also known as: kriyāviśeṣaṇa ("qualification of an action")

Introduction

Recall that adjectives allow us to describe a noun. Although we can describe nouns, we don't yet have a way to describe verbs. That is, we can say The beautiful man goes, but we can't say The man goes beautifully.

In English, words that let us describe the verb are called adverbs. Adverbs exist in Sanskrit, too:

• सुन्दरो नरो गच्छति

  sundaro naro gacchati

  The beautiful man goes.

• सुन्दरं नरो गच्छति

  sundaraṃ naro gacchati

  The man goes beautifully.

Adverbs are easy to form and use, so this should be a quick lesson.

Formation

Most adverbs come directly from adjectives. The neuter singular case 1 form of any adjective is a complete adverb. Adverbs are treated like uninflected words.

• सुन्दर → सुन्दरम्

  sundara → sundaram

  beautiful → beautifully, well, rightly

Adverbs can appear anywhere in the sentence, but they usually appears near the beginning of the sentence.

More properly, adverbs probably come from case 2. But since case 1 and case 2 are identical, there's no harm in saying that they come from case 1.

Devanagari: Common consonants 21 - 25

Here is the next batch of consonants. There are eight more to learn after this.

देवनागरी

IAST

थ

tha

ब

ba

ञ

ña

ट

ṭa

ङ

ṅa

Note the subtle difference between ब and व. The slash on ब makes the letter look like it is broken in two.

The similarity between ब and व has been the source of many errors in Sanskrit manuscripts. This confusion seems to have also been a part of the language itself. Thus a word like śaibya is often written as śaivya.