Translating 'Should' and Reported Speech in a 5-Mark Passage
A pre-board translation passage of 5 marks contains three sentences: 'One should serve one's parents'; 'The teacher told the students that they should study daily'; 'Do not waste time'. The key gives मातापितरौ सेवेत, गुरुः छात्रान् अवदत् यत् ते प्रतिदिनं पठेयुः, and समयं मा नाशय. The scheme awards 1 mark per sentence and 2 for overall grammar. Scripts show: 1(a) मातापितरौ सेवेत; 1(b) मातापितरौ सेवनीयौ; 1(c) मातापितरौ सेव्येते. 2(a) गुरुः छात्रान् अवदत् यत् ते प्रतिदिनं पठेयुः; 2(b) गुरुः छात्रान् अवदत् इति ते प्रतिदिनं पठेयुः. 3(a) समयं मा नाशय; 3(b) समयः मा नश्येत्. Three markers are marking 60 scripts, and the key gives no alternatives. The head examiner wants a decision that can be applied uniformly.
1. Decide the marks for 1(a), 1(b) and 1(c) against the key and justify each.
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1(a) earns 1: विधिलिङ् third singular σεवेत expresses 'one should serve' exactly as the key intends. 1(b) also earns 1: सेवनीयौ is a कृत्य gerundive, dual masculine, agreeing with मातापितरौ, and it carries the sense 'are to be served' - obligation is preserved, only the construction differs. 1(c) earns 0.5: सेव्येते is passive present dual, 'they are served', which removes the obligation and changes voice and sense, not merely style. If the scheme awards only whole marks, give 1(c) zero and note why; do not give it 1 merely because it contains a form of the same root. The same three rulings should be written on the key so all 60 scripts are treated alike.
2. Diagnose 2(b) and say what it should score out of 1.
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Score 0.5. The main clause गुरुः छात्रान् अवदत् is correct, and the optative पठेयुः correctly renders 'they should study'. The fault is syntactic: इति closes a quotation, so placing it after अवदत् and before the reported clause detaches the clause, reading as 'the teacher said thus - they should study daily', two independent statements rather than reported speech. Sanskrit marks the content clause with यत्, which 2(a) does correctly. Half credit reflects that the candidate understood both the verb of saying and the optative but mis-set the clause boundary; zero would ignore real grammatical knowledge, full credit would accept a construction the passage does not use.
3. Is 3(b) समयः मा नश्येत् an acceptable rendering of 'Do not waste time'? Rule and explain.
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Accept only for 0.5. Grammatically, मा with विधिलिङ् can express a negative wish or prohibition, so the form is not ungrammatical. But the meaning shifts twice: नश्येत् is intransitive 'perish, be lost', while 'waste' is the causative नाशय (as in the key), and the nominative समयः makes time the thing that perishes rather than the object wasted. A fair marker records 'correct optative, wrong root and case'. The ruling should be stated on the key, since several candidates are likely to have reasoned the same way; the lesson for the class is that prohibition is grammatical but lexical choice still carries marks.