II nom. - 16. Alternative declensional forms are numerous e.g. devā: devena (instr. sg.); devāiḥ : devebhiḥ (instr. pl.); deva : devāu (nom. - acc. du.); vişņaụ : vişnavi (loc. sg.); rājan: ra jani (loc. sg.); yugā: yugāni (nom. acc. nt. pl.). 17. The stem ava- in the first personal pronoun dual is absent. The compound demonstrative tya- (syaḥ, syā, tyat, etc.) is very common. The historical acc. sg. nt. of the interrogative pronoun (kat) has not yet lost its pronominal value. 18. The injunctive mood is still living; the subjunctive mood is quite vigorous. There are all possible modal variations of the tenses (e.g. gaccha pres imp.; gahi aor. imp.; mumugdhi perf. imp. ; gacchet pres. opt. ; gamyāt aor. opt.; jagamyāt perf. opt.; muñcāt pres. subj. ; mumocati, mumocat perf. subj. ; mucti-aor. subj.) 19. The use of the three past tenses is idiomatic: the imperfect is the past tense of narration; the perfect characteristically expresses the condition attained by the subject as the result of a preceding action; the aorist is neither narrative nor durative but expresses a past action with reference to the present. The present and the present perfect of English are often the equivalents of the Early Vedic perfect and aorist tenses respectively. 20. The augment is sometimes not used (impf. and aor). 21. There is a large number of gerunds (in -tvī, -tvā, -tvāya, -ya, -ya, -tya) and infinitives (acc., dat., abl. -gen. and loc.).
