Lesson l.B Note: Until you are familiar with the pronunciation of the consonants (given in the next lesson), do not attempt to pronounce the Sanskrit words included in the text: this will save the unnecessary labour of unlearning the incorrect pronunciation. l.B.l The Concept of Dhatu A dhatu is a rudimentary verbal element from which words are derived: it is the nucleus to which other word fragments are added to form a whole word. Consider the English verb 'to stand'. Prefixes may be added to this to form further verbs, such as 'misunderstand', or suffixes may be added to form nouns and adjectives, such as 'standard'; indeed, a host of words may be derived from 'stand', such as constant, constitution, stagnant, instant, static, estate, extant, ecstatic, etc. But a dhatu or root is even more fundamental than a verb. The dhatu itself is not found in general speech or writing, and may be likened to the universal idea of a verbal activity, which diverges into many specific meanings, each of which is an aspect of that common universal idea. To appreciate how 'stand' changes to 'state' for example, it would be necessary to study its etymological derivation from the Latin, and ultimately from its Proto-Indo- European (pie) root STA, meaning 'to stand, stand fast'. From this pie root STA are derived other simple English verbs, such as stay, stow, stack, stem, stammer. The situation is a lot simpler in Sanskrit, for these fundamental roots are included in the language itself, and its grammar fully describes the development of words from the dhatu to its fully inflected form as found in sentences. The pie root STA is allied to the Sanskrit dhatu stha, which has the sense of 'cessation or absence of movement', and thus the simple verb derived from the dhatu stha may be translated as 'to stand'. Monier- Williams' dictionary gives several dozen English words that may be used in translating the verb: to stand, stay, remain, continue, be intent upon, make a practice of, keep on, persevere, endure, last, adhere to, stand still, stay quiet, remain stationary, stop, halt, wait, tarry, linger, hesitate, rely on, confide in, desist, be left alone, etc. — all these express some sense of 'cessation or absence of movement', which is the sense of the meaning of the dhatu stha given in the Dhatu-Patha (lit. 'recitation of roots'), which is a list of roots (about 2000 of them) giving grammatical information about their inflection, together with a concise sense of their universal meaning.
