The benedictive mood is a

grammatical mood In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of ...

found in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

, although rarely. It expresses a blessing or wish, such as found in the English expressions "long live the king" and "

may the force be with you The Force is a metaphysical and ubiquitous power in the ''Star Wars'' fictional universe. "Force-sensitive" characters use the Force throughout the franchise. Heroes like the Jedi seek to "become one with the Force", matching their personal will ...

". For verbs in the active voice (''parasmaipada''), it is formed by adding endings very similar to the athematic optative endings directly to the verb root itself. Essentially, the sibilant ''-s'' is inserted between the optative marker ''-yā'' and the personal endings. By the action of the rules of ''

sandhi Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...

'', the second- and third-person benedictive endings are identical to the corresponding optative endings (''-yāst'' turns into ''-yāt'' for the third person, and ''-yāss'' into ''yās'' for the second person). Middle voice (''ātmanepada'') benedictives are not found in Classical Sanskrit. For example, the verb root ''bhū'' forms the benedictive thus:

Bibliography

* ''Devavāṇīpraveśikā: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language'' – Robert P. Goldman – * ''A Sanskrit Grammar for Students'' –

A. A. Macdonell Arthur Anthony Macdonell, FBA (11 May 1854 – 28 December 1930) was a noted Sanskrit scholar. Biography Macdonell was born at Muzaffarpur in the Tirhut region of the state of Bihar in British India, the son of Charles Alexander Macdonell ...

– Grammatical moods Sanskrit grammar {{grammar-stub