THE VERB 301 rayvndm ' may we be lords of riches From this there arises a potential meaning (the mood is sometimes so called) which from the testimony of the various languages was already well estab- lished in the Indo-European period : ydd agne sydm ahatn tvam , tv dm vd ghd sya aham, syus te satyd ihasisah, ‘ if, Agni, I were you or you were me, then your prayers would come true A usage widely developed in Sanskrit is that of the prescriptive optative, which appears largely in law books and similar texts : sdmvatsarikam dptais ca rdstrdd aharayed halim , ‘ he should have the annual tax collected from the kingdom by suitable officials Precative. The precative is formed on the basis of the optative stem by the addition of s to the optative suffix, pro- ducing the combination yds /is. Its use is in all cases confined to the expression of a wish : bhdgo me agne sakhyd nd mrdhydh f may my good fortune, O Agni, not relax in (thy) friendship yd no dvdsti ddharah sds padista * may he who hates us fall down §3. The Verbal Stem The foregoing analysis of the root shows how from the earliest period the verb could be built optionally on the root itself, or the root already provided with suffixes. These suffixes are in all cases identifiable with the corresponding suffixes which appear in the formation of nouns. In these formations of the oldest type the suffixes are completely incorporated and new, fuller roots are created. Besides these suffixes there exists a series used only to form the present stem but excluded from the other verbal formations. These are likewise identifiable with corresponding nominal suffixes, e.g. dhrsndju of the fifth class, from dhrs - ' to be bold with the adjectival stem dhrsnu- 1 bold The general structure of nominal and verbal stems runs closely parallel. Both may be based either on the simple root or on the root provided with suffix. The suffixes may be simple or compound and the compound suffixes arise always by the- addition of one suffix to another. The formations are divided into non-thematic and thematic classes, the latter in both cases progressively increasing in importance. Verbal stems may be accented on the root or the suffix, e.g. in the case of non-thematic stems vdmiti , jdsma as opposed to &rndti> prn&ti , and in the case of thematic stems, bhdvati as opposed to tuddti . The fact that such accentual difference corresponds to no difference of meaning in the* verbal system, but clearly does
