Past tense in Sanskrit - लङ् लकार

Past tense is called लङ् लकार in Sanskrit. 

To form a past tense of a verb, we need to add the letter अ before the verb followed by personal endings.

Personal ending for parasmai padi verbs for third person, second person and first person are as follows.

अत्	अताम्	अन्
अ	अतम्	अत
अम्	आव	आम

Let us look at the past tense (ल​ङ्)form of पठ् verb. (These are for parasmai padi verbs.)

	एक वचन	द्वि वचन	बहु वचन
प्रथम पुरुष	अपठत्	अपठताम्	अपठन्
मध्यम पुरुष	अपठः	अपठतम्	अपठत​
उत्तम पुरुष	अपठम्	अपठाव	अपठाम

Let us see the past tense forms of verb अस् (to be)

आसीत्	आस्ताम्	आसन्
आसीः	आस्तम्	आस्त
आसम्	आस्व	आस्म

Here is the verb कृ (to do)

अकरोत्	अकुरुताम्	अकुर्वन्
अकरोः	अकुरुतम्	अकुरुत
अकरवम्	अकुर्व	अकुर्म

Let us look at few more sentences.

1. पौरा: कूर्मं अपश्यन् |   The people saw the tortoise.
   
2. धीवारा: तत्र आगच्छन्| The fishermen came there
   
3. एतत् श्तुत्वा कूर्म​: अवदत्| Listening this, the tortoise said.
4. एकदा श्रीकंठ​: तेन सह तस्य ग्रहं अगच्छत्। Once Shrikantha went to his house with him.
   

Write past tense of these verbs.

अस्ति गच्छसि  करोमि भवन्ति
वसति पतथ धावाव​:

Let us translate these sentences into Sanskrit.

1. I went home.
2. The woman wrote a book.
3. The students saw the teacher.
4. The child fell down.

 

Translation of 1 is 

    अहं गृहम् अगच्छम् | 

Here गृहम् means home. You see this word used very often in all Indian languages. And this is the origin of the word घर in Hindi.

You also notice the letter अ before verb root and is followed by personal ending which is अम्

Now how will you translate this into plural?

    वयं गृहम् अगच्छाम|

Which means we went home.

Now  we remember that वयं is we. There is yet another first person pronoun - we both. Which is आवाम्

    आवाम् गृहम अगच्छाव| 

We both went home

2. महिला पुस्तकम् अलिखत्|

महिला means woman. Other words which mean woman are स्त्री, नारी, वनिता

पुस्तकम् means book which is the object in the sentence. So the word is in accusative case - or द्वितीया विभक्ति 

अलिखत् - is third person singular past tense of लिख् - to write 

Now let us see if you can convert this sentence into plural.

Women write books.

महिला: पुस्तकानि अलिखन् | 

Here the accusative form of book in plural is  पुस्तकानि. This is same as nominative form. In neuter gender the nominative and accusative forms are similar. 

Again if we want to say, two women write books, we can use dual number as

महिले पुस्तके अलिखताम् | 

पुस्तके is also in dual - two books.

 

3. 

    छात्रा: शिक्षकम् अपश्यन्|

The same sentence in वर्तमान काल is

    छात्रा: शिक्षकम् पश्यन्ति |

And if you want to say "The student saw the teacher", you have to say

छात्र: शिक्षकम् अपश्यत्|

 

4.  

शिशु: अपतत् | 

Here the verb is पत्

Let us look yet another sentence using this verb. 

वृक्षात् पत्रानि पतन्ति |

Leaves fall down from the tree.

A thing to be noted here is वृक्षात् uses ablative case - पञ्चमि विभक्ति . Ablative case is used to indicate away from. 

Now how will you say, children fell down?

शिशव: अपतन्| 

By the way, the word शिशु: is masculine and so its declension is same as that of guru shabda.