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Declension of nouns ending with vowel:
Regular nouns ending with a, ā, i and u

Contents

• Introduction
• Nouns and adjectives ending with a
• Nouns and adjectives ending with ā
• Nouns and adjectives ending with i and u

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Introduction

A very large amount of nouns and adjectives in Sanskrit end with vowels (for example, nouns that end in a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, au, ai, ṛ or ṝ). We will show you a different table of endings for each relevant vowel ending. In this chapter, we will cover the declension of regular nouns ending with a, ā, i and u.

In general, for nouns ending with vowel, the process of declension that we will use will be like this: you take the prātipadika (crude/dictionary form of the noun), drop the last vowel, and then add the appropriate ending. For example, to decline the masculine noun aśva (the complete declension table for aśva is shown below), you drop the last vowel, getting aśv as the result. Then, for example, suppose that you want to decline it in the Instrumental singular. As shown in the table below entitled "Endings for masculine nouns ending in a", the ending for the Instrumental singular of a masculine noun is "ena". So, you add "ena" to aśv and obtain aśvena, which is the final result.

The process won't always be as straightforward and described above (but still not too complicated). When you add the ending to the word, a small change in the ending may be necessary due to Sandhi rules. But the cases where it can happen will be covered here.

Let's see the declension of nouns and adjectives ending with a:

Nouns and adjectives ending with a

Nouns ending in a can be masculine or neuter (there are no feminine nouns with this ending). Below are the tables of endings for masculine and neuter nouns ending in a:

Endings for masculine nouns ending in a

Endings for neuter nouns ending in a

As we already described above, to decline a noun ending in a, just drop the final "a" and add the appropriate ending. As an example of masculine noun, below is the declension table of aśva (meaning "horse"). The endings are highlighted in red:

Aśva (masculine)

As an example of neuter noun, below is the declension table of dāna, meaning "the act of giving":

Dāna (neuter)

So far, so good. Now, as we have said before, there are endings which, in some cases, have to change a little bit when they are added to a word, due to Sandhi rules. To illustrate it, we will show you the declension table of the noun Rāma:

Rāma (masculine)

* Notice that the original endings "ena" of the Instrumental singular and "ānām" of the Genitive plural changed respectively to "eṇa" and "āṇām". The reason this happened was due to the 18th Rule of Consonant Sandhi. Let us transcribe here the text of this Sandhi rule:

18th Rule of Consonant Sandhi
When "n", comes after "r", "ṣ", "ṛ" or "ṝ", within the same word, is to be obligatorily changed to "ṇ" although a Vowel, a Semivowel (except "l"), a Nasal, a consonant belonging to the Guttural or Labial classes, or "h" comes between the abovementioned letters (i.e. "r", "ṣ", "ṛ" and "ṝ") and "n".

This rule sounds complicated, but it basically means that "n" must be changed to "ṇ" in the following situation: when it comes after "r", "ṣ", "ṛ" or "ṝ" within the same word. But it doesn't need to come "directly" after "r", "ṣ", "ṛ" or "ṝ": if there are "certain" letters between the "n" and the "r", "ṣ", "ṛ" or "ṝ", this Sandhi rule will still apply. These "certain" letters are (reading it from the Sandhi rule): a vowel, a semivowel (except "l"), a nasal, a consonant belonging to the guttural or labial classes, or "h" (if you don't know what are semivowels, nasals, etc., you should consult this table).

Now, we can explain why "ena" and "ānām" changed to "eṇa" and "āṇām" respectively. As you can see, when you add ena to rām to form the Instrumental singular, you produce rāmena. But look at the Sandhi rule: in rāmena, there is an "n" coming after an "r", with "āme" between them. That is, there are two vowels (ā and e) and a consonant belonging to the labial class (m) between them. So, in this situation, the 18th Rule of Consonant Sandhi applies and the "n" is to be changed to "ṇ". Thus, rāmena becomes rāmeṇa. A very similar process occurs with the Genitive plural ending (ānām), so that rām + ānām = rāmānām becomes rāmāṇām.

This probably sounded complicated, but the other cases that will show up will be very similar to this one.

For another example, below is the neuter noun gṛha, which means "house":

Gṛha (neuter)

* The original endings "ena" of the Instrumental singular, "āni" of the Nominative/Vocative/Accusative plural and "ānām" of the Genitive plural changed respectively to "eṇa", "āṇi" and "āṇām" due to that same 18th Rule of Consonant Sandhi. As you can see, all of the endings that have to change have a letter "n", and they are added to gṛh, which has a letter "ṛ" followed by "h"; in other words, the 18th Sandhi Rule of Consonant Sandhi applies.

An additional example (hṛdaya, a neuter noun that means "heart"):

Hṛdaya (neuter)

Despite the fact that hṛdaya has an "ṛ", the original endings "ena" of the Instrumental singular, "āni" of the Nominative/Vocative/Accusative plural and "ānām" of the Genitive plural remain unchanged, unlike the previous example. This is because, when you add the ending to hṛday, there will be a "d" between the "ṛ" and the "n" (for example, in hṛday + ena = hṛdayena). As you can see in the text of the Sandhi rule, "d" is not among the letters that can be between the "n" and the "r", "ṣ", "ṛ" or "ṝ". Therefore, the 18th rule of consonant Sandhi does not apply in this case.

Nouns and adjectives ending with ā

Nouns ending with ā can be feminine or masculine. The vast majority of this kind of nouns are the feminine ones, and the masculine ones are not very common.

Three kinds of nouns and adjectives will be shown in this section, and each one has a different table of endings. These kinds are:

1) Regular feminine nouns: the most common kind of noun ending with ā. For example: the name Sītā.

2) Masculine and feminine nouns that have a verbal root that ends with ā as its last member. For example: viśvapā ("protector of the world"), which has the verbal root pā (which means "to protect") as its last member.

3) Masculine nouns that don't have a verbal root as its last member. For example: the name Hāhā.

Let's take a look at each of these kinds:

1) Regular feminine nouns - Such nouns and adjectives are declined according to the table of endings below:

Endings for feminine nouns ending in ā

The procedure for applying these endings is the same as for the nouns ending with "a" (that is, drop the final ā and add the appropriate ending). For example, below is the declension of the name Sītā:

Sītā (feminine)

2) Masculine and feminine nouns derived from verbal roots that end in ā - Nouns and adjectives in this class are declined according to the following table of endings:

Endings for masculine nouns ending in ā

For example, below is the declension of the noun viśvapā ("protector of the world"):

Viśvapā (masculine)

Some of these nouns whose latter member is a verbal root that ends in ā can also be feminine in gender. For example, viśvapā can be feminine and, in this case, it also means "protector of the world", but referring to a woman. When this kind of noun has a feminine version, the feminine version is declined just like the masculine version. So, the declension table of viśvapā (feminine) is exactly like the masculine version:

Viśvapā (feminine)

3) Masculine nouns that don't have a verbal root as its last member - This kind of noun is very rare. An example is the name Hāhā. Below is the declension of Hāhā:

Hāhā (masculine)

Nouns and adjectives ending with i and u

Bases ending with i and u can be masculine, feminine and neuter. There are many of them, and they are very common. In this section, we are going to show the tables of endings for nouns ending both in i and u paired side-by-side. We have chosen to show the declensions of both kinds of nouns in a single section so that you can see how similar their tables of endings are.

Below are the tables of endings for masculine, feminine and neuter nouns ending in i and u:

Again, the procedure for applying these endings is simply to drop the final i or u of the noun and apply the appropriate endings from the tables above.

Notice how the tables in each pair of tables are analogous to each other. For example, the masculine Nominative plural ending for i-ending nouns is ayaḥ, and the one for u is avaḥ. Similarly, the masculine Dative singular for i-ending nouns is aye, and the one for u is ave.

Also notice that there are endings which have an additional optional form. For example, in the feminine endings for nouns ending in i, the Dative singular can be aye or yai (thus, for example, the Dative singular of the feminine noun śakti can be śaktaye or śaktyai). Analogously, in the feminine endings for nouns ending in u, the Dative singular can be ave or vai.

Now, we will show you 3 examples of nouns ending in i, for masculine, feminine and neuter, respectively. The examples will be: kavi (meaning "poet"), śakti (meaning "power") and vāri (meaning "water").

Kavi (masculine)

Śakti (feminine)

Vāri (neuter)

* In the declension of vāri, there are several endings where the original "n" changes to "ṇ" when they are attached to vār, due to the 18th Rule of Consonant Sandhi. For example, in the Nominative, Vocative and Accusative dual forms, vār + inī = vārinī becomes vāriṇī.

And now, we will show you 3 examples of nouns ending in u, for masculine, feminine and neuter, respectively. The examples will be: guru (meaning "any venerable or respectable person", or the most commonly known meaning of "spiritual preceptor/teacher"), the feminine declension of the adjective mṛdu (meaning "soft") and vastu (meaning "object").

Guru (masculine)

* The original endings "unā" of the Instrumental singular and "ūnām" of the Genitive plural changed respectively to "uṇā" and "ūṇām", again due to the 18th Rule of Consonant Sandhi.

Mṛdu (feminine)

Vastu (neuter)

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