Bahuvrīhi or Karmadhāraya? 'पीताम्बरः' in a Sentence
A 3-mark question asks students to split 'पीताम्बरः' in the sentence 'पीताम्बरः हरिः सेव्यते' and name the samāsa. The key says bahuvrīhi: 'पीतम् अम्बरं यस्य सः' (one whose garment is yellow), because the compound denotes Hari by possession. A student writes 'पीतम् अम्बरम्' and names it karmadhāraya, translating the sentence as 'the yellow garment Hari is served'. The teacher sees that the split itself is phonologically correct and the student has identified the component words, but the compound type and the gender of the headword are wrong. In the same class, five other students made the same analysis. The teacher's marking scheme gives 1 mark for splitting, 1 for naming the samāsa, and 1 for using it correctly in translation. The teacher must decide whether the split mark can be awarded independently of the compound type, and how to handle the translation mark.
1. Can the student receive the split mark even though the compound type is wrong? Explain.
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Yes, 1 mark for the split. पीतम् अम्बरम् correctly identifies the members and their immediate relation. But the split alone does not decide the samāsa: the same words form karmadhāraya when the compound is neuter (पीताम्बरम् = a yellow garment) and bahuvrīhi when the compound is masculine and denotes a possessor (पीताम्बरः = one whose garment is yellow). For bahuvrīhi, the full expansion needs the possessive clause यस्य सः. The student's split is therefore incomplete for a bahuvrīhi. Award 1 for split, 0 for samāsa name.
2. What in the sentence and the word's gender decides the compound type?
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The headword पीताम्बरः is masculine and is the subject of सेव्यते, with हरिः in apposition. A karmadhāraya would be neuter पीताम्बरम् meaning 'yellow garment' and could not agree with हरिः. The masculine form signals a personal referent: 'the yellow-garmented one', i.e., Hari. Bahuvrīhi takes the gender of the possessor, not of its members. The student's translation 'the yellow garment Hari' ignores gender agreement and the appositional हरिः.
3. How should the translation mark be awarded, and what remedial exercise would help?
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0/1 for translation: the rendering misidentifies the subject and produces a nonsensical sentence. The correct sense is 'Hari, whose garment is yellow, is served.' Remedial exercise: give minimal pairs पीताम्बरम् वस्त्रम् vs पीताम्बरः हरिः and ask students to change gender and meaning; then expand with यस्य सः only for the masculine. This makes compound type visible through agreement rather than memorized labels.