THE VERB 298 tasthau ' stands J (permanently) : tisthati ‘ takes his stand etc. Closely related is the meaning of continuous action seen in such examples as : nd srdmyanti nd vi muncanti ite vdyo nd paptuh * They do not become weary or stop, they fly (continu- ally) like birds The perfect is thus in origin a special kind of present tense, not a preterite form, and in such cases it is normally to be translated by the English present. Its develop- ment to a preterite takes place in two stages, both of which are represented in the Vedic language. The first stage is the de- velopment of a sense which is rendered in translation by the English perfect. Since a state is normally the result of a pre- ceding process, it was natural that the perfect should be used to express the fact that such an action had already taken place. As examples of this use we may quote : ydt stm Aga£ cakrtna tdt su mrlatu * whatever sin we have committed, let him forgive that and ydthd jaghdntha dhrsata purd cid evA jahi sdirum asmakam indr a ' as thou hast boldly slain (enemies) in the past, so slay our foe now, O Indra The difference in meaning be- tween this use of the perfect and the aorist remains clear, be- cause the aorist is confined to those actions which have taken place in the immediate past, while the perfect indicates comple- tion of the action regardless of the precise time. The final step takes place when the preterital sense acquired by the perfect in contexts like these becomes the predominant sense, with the result that the perfect becomes a tense of narrative u r ith a meaning that does not differ materially from that of the imper- fect. The last usage has already become quite common in the Rgveda : ahan dhim dnv apds tatarda, ‘ (Indra) slew the dragon, he penetrated to the waters The same usage has developed widely in other sections of Indo-European, notably in Italic, Celtic and Germanic. The pluperfect, the augmented preterite of the perfect, is rare even in the Rgveda , and it quickly dies out. It appears to have no specific meaning proper to itself, being used as a rule in sense of the imperfect (narrative), occasionally in that of the aorist. Mood. Five moods are enumerated in Sanskrit grammar, the Injunctive, the Imperative, the Subjunctive, the Optative and the Precative. In the older language modal forms may be made from all three types of stem, present, aorist and perfect, without any apparent difference of meaning. In the classical language
