Finalising the Key for a Samāsa Identification Test
Two examiners are finalising the key for a twenty-item samāsa identification test, one mark each, given to Class IX. The sentences, not the bare compounds, are printed on the paper, and the instruction reads: name the samāsa and write its vigraha. Three items now block the key. Item 6 prints pītāmbaro hariḥ in one sentence and pītāmbaram vastram in another, and examiner A wants both marked bahuvrīhi. Item 11 prints rājapuruṣaḥ in a sentence about a king's servant; examiner B calls it karmadhāraya because, in his words, both members point to a person. Item 18 prints pāṇipādam, which one girl analysed as pāṇī ca pādau ca and labelled itaretara. A parent has already asked to see the key, so every disputed entry needs a one-line vigraha that will stand up to scrutiny, and the two examiners must agree on a rule for awarding partial credit.
1. Resolve item 6. Can the same printed compound be classified differently in the two sentences? Give the vigraha for each and state the criterion that decides.
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Yes - classification follows the sentence, not the spelling. Item 6 is not one item but two.
pītāmbaro hariḥ. Vigraha: pītaṃ ambaraṃ yasya saḥ ('he whose garment is yellow'). The compound denotes someone other than its members - a person, not a cloth. That is bahuvrīhi, and the compound takes the gender and number of the noun it qualifies (hariḥ, masculine singular), not of its final member ambara (neuter). Examiner A is right here, but for the wrong reason if he thinks the spelling decides.
pītāmbaram vastram. Vigraha: pītam ambaraṃ ('a yellow garment'). Here the compound and its members have the same referent - the compound is a viśeṣaṇa-viśeṣya unit, a karmadhāraya, and its gender follows the head member ambara, neuter.
The deciding criterion is therefore whether the referent lies outside the compound (anyapadārtha-prādhānya → bahuvrīhi) or is identical with its last member (samānādhikaraṇa → karmadhāraya). A practical test to print in the key: ask 'what is the sentence about?' If the answer is not one of the two members, it is bahuvrīhi. Examiner A's blanket answer would make pītāmbaram vastram denote a person wearing yellow, which the sentence plainly does not say.
2. Resolve items 11 and 18: rājapuruṣaḥ and pāṇipādam. Show the vigraha that settles each and explain why the examiners' proposed labels fail.
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Item 11 - rājapuruṣaḥ. Correct vigraha: rājñaḥ puruṣaḥ ('the king's man'), a ṣaṣṭhī-tatpuruṣa. Examiner B's test - 'both members point to a person' - is not a test at all: in a karmadhāraya the two members must be in apposition, so that the compound could be expanded as rājā san puruṣaḥ or with the sense 'a man who is a king'. But a servant is not a king; the relation between the members is possession/service, which the grammar expresses by a case ending, and the case here is ṣaṣṭhī. B's label would make the sentence say the servant is the king. The general test to print: if the vigraha needs a case ending other than simple apposition, it is tatpuruṣa, not karmadhāraya.
Item 18 - pāṇipādam. The girl's vigraha pāṇī ca pādau ca is right, but her label is not. A dvandva whose members are merely listed keeps the number of its members: itaretara dvandva would appear as pāṇī pādau (dual plus dual) in the appropriate case. The printed form pāṇipādam is neuter singular, which signals samāhāra dvandva, a collective: 'hands and feet taken together as one body-part group'. So the entry is one mark for the vigraha, and the label must be samāhāra dvandva. Her analysis shows she understood the meaning and missed only the number signal - which is exactly the distinction the paper was testing.
3. Draft the marking rule for these compound items: what earns full credit, what earns half, and how should a correct label with a mismatched vigraha be handled?
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Because the instruction demands both a name and a vigraha, the mark should be split or, at one mark per item, awarded only when the two agree. A defensible rule:
- Full credit when the label is correct and the vigraha is of the same type and supports that label - e.g. bahuvrīhi with pītaṃ ambaraṃ yasya saḥ.
- Half credit when the vigraha is right but the label is wrong, or the label is right but the vigraha is missing the decisive element (as with the girl in item 18, whose vigraha pāṇī ca pādau ca is correct while 'itaretara' is not). She has demonstrated the semantic analysis but not the formal distinction.
- No credit when the label and the vigraha contradict each other, e.g. labelling rājapuruṣaḥ karmadhāraya while writing rājñaḥ puruṣaḥ. There the student has copied a term without applying it, and awarding anything would reward the very habit the item exists to detect.
Two further safeguards make the key appeal-proof. First, the key should print, for each item, the sentence in which the compound occurs, since item 6 shows the sentence can change the answer. Second, both examiners should mark ten scripts each against this rule before the rest are marked, and compare totals item by item; any item where they differ by more than two marks overall is a defective item and should be dropped and the paper re-scaled out of nineteen rather than defended.