Evaṃ me sutaṃ

As we saw above, these three types of verbal bases take up the same terminations in the Past Tense forms. Let us study one example of conjugation with respect to the Past Tense and compare it with the other types of verbal bases.

Conjugation of a-ending verbal base (bhāsa)
bhāsati = speaks

Please note that the vowel ‘a’ is added before the verbal base (as a prefix) in its conjugated forms. Thus, for each termination there are two possible forms.

E.g. bhāsi / abhāsi,
bhāsittha / abhāsittha
bhāsimha / abhāsimha

ā and o-ending verbal bases follow a similar conjugation pattern.

Thus ā-ending verbal bases (like suṇā) has conjugated forms as :

suṇi / asuṇi – suṇimsu / asuṇimsu
                          suṇuṃ / asuṇuṃ
… and so on.

Similarly, o-ending verbal bases (like sakko) has conjugated forms as :

sakki / asakki – sakkimsu / asakkimsu
                           sakkuṃ / asakkuṃ
… and so on.

Please note that when we have verbal bases beginning with a vowel, the prefix ‘a’ is not added and conjugated forms of these verbs will not have the such variant forms.

E.g. in case of verbs such as :

Let us study the conjugation of verb āharati to understand this difference clearly.

Conjugation of verbal base begininning with a vowel (āhara)
āharati = brings