The Other Cases

Introduction

Now that we've studied all of the features of the Sanskrit noun — case, number, person, and gender — let's finish up our study of the -a nouns with a summary of the four remaining noun cases.

Since we are covering four cases in one lesson, it's unwise to study all features of them, especially because these cases are more complex than the ones we've studied so far. For that reason, we will study only one primary meaning for each case. Moreover, we will skip the sandhi rules that apply to these cases. After Starting Out, we will study the Sanskrit noun cases in more detail.

The four cases

Roughly, the meanings of the five cases are as follows:

Case
English version
case 3
"with"
case 4
"for"
case 5
"from"
case 7
"in"

Examples

Inflection

For now, let's study only the singular versions of these cases:

-a (masculine)
गज Singular Dual Plural
Case 1 (subject) गजः
gajaḥ
गजौ
gajau
गजाः
gajāḥ
Case 2 (object) गजम्
gajam
गजौ
gajau
गजान्
gajān
Case 3 ("with") गजेन
gajena
Case 4 ("for") गजाय
gajāya
Case 5 ("from") गजात्
gajāt
Case 6 ("of") गजस्य
gajasya
गजयोः
gajayoḥ
गजानाम्
gajānām
Case 7 ("in") गजे
gaje
Case 8 (address) गज
gaja
गजौ
gajau
गजाः
gajāḥ

The singular forms of the eight cases are all very common, and they are worth memorizing well. But the other endings are much less common, so we can ignore them for the time being.