There is a group of verb forms, fairly common in the Rigveda, which are formed from the full-grade, accented root and the ending -si. They function as imperatives, and on the basis of various evidence, can be shown to be aorists. Quite common in Vedic, there is also one example in Avestan, dOiSI, at Y.33.13a, from the verb dis
(Ved. diś), ‘to show’.69
Cardona (1965) provides a quite comprehensive survey of the existing forms. After drawing up a list of forms which he considers belong to this category, he splits them into three groups. Group 1 consists of the roots mad, yaj, dah, sah, ji and nī, which have thematic presents and sigmatic aorists, e.g. yaja-/yakù-. Group 2 consists of three further roots – p, p ®, and r ā, which have other types of presents and
67 Dunkel (1985: 66) explicitly says that these forms belong to an earlier morphological layer than the zero grade forms.
68 Insler (19722: 559) suggests that the aorist injunctive form yodhīs, used modally at 10.120.3cd is in fact formed on the basis of the anomalous imperative form yódhi.
sigmatic aorists, e.g. põµti/prās-. His third group consists of d, yam, mā, kùi,70 vī, juù, sad, śru, yudh, hu, cakù, naś and rad, which do not have sigmatic aorists. Despite the relatively large number of roots in the third group, the forms in the first and second groups account for 112 occurrences of the -si imperative, or over two thirds of the total number of attested instances. Thus, he justifies the classification of the -si imperative as part of the sigmatic aorist system.
Next, Cardona goes on to show that very often, third person commands or requests are made by means of the subjunctive. In particular, this is true in the case of the sigmatic aorist system, because of the lack of a third person aorist imperative form for these stems, and the forms of the type yakùi supply second person singular aorist imperatives corresponding to the third person singular aorist subjunctives of the type yakùat – a result of the levelling of the contrast between the subjunctive and the imperative which took place within the sigmatic system (1965: 10). This correlation, or, as Cardona sees it, the usage of an originally imperative form in a subjunctive function (1965: 9), is furthermore assured by the usage of -si forms in relative clauses, for which see p. 59 below.
Szemerényi (1966) takes the opposite view. While he accepts Cardona’s basic premise that the -si imperative belongs to the sigmatic aorist, he suggests that these forms are originally subjunctives which have come to be used as imperatives, again primarily basing his argument on the fact that these forms may appear in subordinate clauses. More precisely, he claims that the -si forms are in fact the result of a haplology of the original -sasi subjunctive ending - this latter only being attested in one case – darùasi. Thus, while the 3rd sing. may either end in -sat or -sati, the 2nd sing. regularly ends either in -sas or -si. In this, as he himself notes, he is accepting an idea which was specifically rejected by Cardona (1965: 9).
Watkins (1968: 140ff.) sees the -si imperative forms as inherited from Indo- European, and compares them to the Greek sigmatic aorist imperatives in -son, as in, e.g. Homeric lûxon, deéxon, etc., noting that the Greek sigmatic aorist, like its Vedic counterpart, cannot take the 2nd sing. aor. impv. ending -dhi/-qi.
Watkins analyses the forms as full-grade root + s + i, where i is the deictic particle, presumably the same one as seen in the primary indicative endings -mi, -si
and -ti. He considers these forms to be morphologically identical to the 3rd sing. medio-passive, both of which he describes, following Kuryłowicz, as ‘zero-person’.
Bammesberger (1983) rejects Watkins analysis, on the grounds that the particle -i is found only in primary endings andis thus excluded both from the sigmatic aorist and from the imperative. However, he accepts the idea of the haplology of the subjunctive, but only in the cases where the -si forms occur in relative clauses. For the rest of the forms, Bammesberger suggests that there was an imperative morpheme -i, which was added to the full-grade stem to produce such forms as yódhi, bodhi and jóùi. This -i was then transferred to the sigmatic aorist by analogy.71
Further afield, Jasanoff (1986 and 1987) has claimed to have found similar forms in Old Irish, Tocharian, and possibly Hittite, Old Prussian and Messapic. See under śroùi, joùi and nakùi, and page 62.
There are several difficulties with these forms, not the least of which is identifying them, as there are several other forms which can end in -si, such as the 2nd sing. of root presents, the 1st sing. s-aor. med., and the 3rd sing. aor. medio-passive, a fact considered significant by Watkins (1968) (see above). Some verbs have more than one of these homophonous forms.
Each scholar who has dealt with the subject has produced a different list of extant forms. This work will take as a starting point 26 of the 27 forms appearing in Lubotsky (19971)72.
71Jasanoff (2002) comes to precisely the opposite conclusion, that the forms bodhi and yódhi were created by analogy to joùi, and the -i subsequently reanalysed as an -i imperative morpheme. See page 26.
72
I am omitting consideration of the form
váüsi, which is not a -si imperative. This form appears neither in Cardona’s list of forms, nor in other lists quoted by Cardona in his paper. It is however classified as a -si imperative by Lubotsky (19971).Narten (1964: 235) and Geldner both consider it to be a 1st pers. middle injunctive, and indeed it is difficult to see how it can be considered an imperative. It occurs once at 5.70.1 purūrúõā cid dhy ásty, ávo nūnáü vāü varuõa / mítra váüsi vāü sumatím ‘Because it exists so widely, I would win your grace now, O Varuõa, your goodwill, O Mitra.’
cakùi ‘show, look’
Root: cakù; pres. caùñe; aor. –; no. of occurrences: 2
Occurs at 7.3.6d and 9.97.33a. This is one of only two active forms of this root, the other being the injunctive present form cakùur. The examples are: 7.3.6cd divó ná te tanyatúr eti śúùmaś, citró ná s½raþ práti cakùi bhānúm, ‘Your hissing comes like thunder from heaven, show your brilliance, being bright like the sun,’ and 9.97.33ab divyáþ suparõó ’va cakùi soma, pínvan dhµrāþ kármaõā devávītau, ‘Look (down) like the heavenly eagle, O Soma, fattening your streams with a sacrificial act at the divine feast’.