The Causative That Will Not Sit Still
During a Friday grammar tutorial, a Class XII group analyzes an unseen sentence from a practice paper: rājñā puruṣaṃ ghātayati. Fourteen students render it 'He has the man killed by the king'; nine render it 'He causes the king to kill the man.' A third group claims ghātayati is a frequentative and should be translated 'He keeps killing the man.' The teacher has already taught han (second gaṇa), the ṇic suffix, and the instrumental of agent and causee, but the departmental answer key prints only 'The king causes the man to be killed' without explanation. The key cannot be right as it stands, because rājñā is instrumental, not nominative. The teacher must settle the marking scheme before the scripts are returned, decide whether to penalize either reading, and prepare a short board work that makes the ambiguity visible. The class has 38 students and 25 minutes left.
1. Identify the formation of ghātayati and explain what grammatical roles rājñā can play. Why is the third group's frequentative claim wrong?
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Formation. ghātayati is the third-person singular present of the causative (ṇic) of han (second gaṇa, parasmaipada): han becomes ghāt- plus -aya- plus -ti. It is not a frequentative; a yaṅ form would show reduplication and a different suffix pattern. The third group has confused a causative with a repeated-action form.
Roles of rājñā. In a causative of a transitive root, the causer is the subject, the original object stays accusative, and the original agent, the person made to do the killing, is normally instrumental. So rājñā most naturally marks the causee: 'he causes the king to kill the man.' The instrumental can in principle mark a mere instrument ('through the king'), but that reading supplies an unexpressed killer and is pragmatically weaker. The printed key, 'The king causes the man to be killed,' makes the king the nominative causer, which the form rājñā rules out. The key, not the students, is the main source of error.
2. Which rendering should the key accept as primary, and what should the teacher do about the key's printed translation?
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The primary rendering should be 'He causes the king to kill the man,' with rājñā analyzed as causee-agent. Accept 'He has the man killed by the king' only if the student explicitly explains the king as an instrument hired to kill and notes the missing killer; that is a defensible but marked reading. The fourteen students who wrote the first rendering should not be penalized. The nine who wrote the second should receive credit if their explanation is coherent, because the instrumental alone does not absolutely forbid an instrument reading. The key must be corrected by erratum: the king cannot be the causer in a sentence where rājñā is instrumental. In the marking scheme, award one mark for identifying the causative and one for assigning the instrumental correctly, so that the ambiguous English does not dominate the score. Use the discrepancy as a teaching point about case roles, not as a trick.
3. Rewrite the sentence in Sanskrit in two unambiguous ways, one for each intended meaning, and explain what each change accomplishes.
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For 'he causes the king to kill the man': sa rājānaṃ puruṣaṃ ghātayituṃ prerayati ('he impels the king to kill the man'). The causee becomes the object of a finite verb of impelling, and the infinitive names the action; the instrumental ambiguity disappears.
For 'he has the man killed by the king': sa rājānaṃ niyojya puruṣaṃ ghātayati ('having engaged the king, he has the man killed'). The participle makes the king's role explicit.
A minimal pair such as rājā puruṣaṃ ghātayati (the king as causer) versus rājānaṃ puruṣaṃ ghātayati (the king as causee) can also be used, but the double accusative should be glossed because it is not the only possible analysis. The lesson is that case endings, not word order, carry the roles.