Choosing a Sandhi Split in a Temple-Visit Sentence
During a mock HSC Sanskrit (Third Language) paper modelled on the BSE Odisha pattern, Section B carries a 4-mark sandhi-viccheda item. The printed sentence is: “narapatiḥ devālayaṃ gataḥ.” The instruction says “yathāyogaṃ vicchidya” (split suitably, according to the sense). A student, Meera, writes two candidate splits in the margin: (a) deva + ālayam, and (b) devā + layam. She has 9 minutes left and must choose one for the fair copy. Her grammar notes list savarṇa-dīrgha sandhi (a/ā + a/ā → ā) but do not discuss meaning-based selection. The passage context says the king went to a place to worship. The invigilator will not answer content questions. Meera worries that both splits are grammatically permissible and that the marking scheme may accept only the one matching the passage. She also must state the sandhi name for full marks.
1. Which split should Meera enter in the fair copy, and which words in the printed sentence decide the issue? Explain the reasoning in 3–4 sentences.
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She should enter deva + ālayam (‘the temple’). The decisive word is gataḥ, which is nominative singular and must agree with narapatiḥ; the sentence therefore has a singular subject, the king. If Meera split devā + layam, she would be treating devā as a plural subject (‘the gods’), but the nominative plural is devāḥ, not devā, and the printed string has no visarga. Moreover, a plural subject would require gatāḥ, not gataḥ. The passage context - the king going to worship - independently supports ‘temple’. The alternative is not a grammatical parse of the printed forms, even though the letters look divisible.
2. Name the sandhi operating at the junction and explain why the other split cannot be presented as a sandhi solution.
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The junction is savarṇa-dīrgha sandhi: final -a of deva + initial ā- of ālaya → -ā-, so deva + ālayam → devālayaṃ. The rule is commonly cited as akaḥ savarṇe dīrghaḥ. The alternative devā + layam does not involve a vowel junction at all; it would merely place a word devā (which is not the needed nominative plural) before layam. A sandhi question asks for a division that recovers the two pre-sandhi words; here that is deva and ālaya. If Meera wrote devā + layam, she would be changing the morphology, not explaining a sandhi.
3. Suppose the passage had an underlying phrase **devāḥ layaṃ gatāḥ**. How would Meera’s analysis change, and what does this show about relying on letters alone?
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She would split devāḥ + layam, not deva + ālayam. devāḥ is nominative plural and gatāḥ is nominative plural, so the subject is ‘the gods’ and the sense is ‘the gods went to dissolution.’ The surface letters would also undergo visarga sandhi, so they would not necessarily appear as devālayaṃ at all. This shows that sandhi-viccheda must start from the endings and the sentence’s agreement, not from a visual division of the printed string. Meera should ask: which parse gives a subject that agrees with gataḥ/gatāḥ and a sense that fits the passage?