Fixing an anuvāda rubric: gerundives, passive and the shared subject
Class 11 Sanskrit, translation section, 12 marks: four Sanskrit sentences from the prescribed prose to be rendered into Punjabi/Hindi, 3 marks each. The sentences are (i) मया ग्रामो न गन्तव्यः, (ii) तेन ग्रन्थः पठ्यते, (iii) भोजनं कृत्वा सः निद्रां गतः, (iv) शिष्येण गुरुः न विस्मर्तव्यः. Thirty-eight scripts have been marked once, and the pattern of errors is clear. For (i), 14 wrote 'I did not go to the village' and 6 wrote 'by me the village is not to be gone'. For (ii), 22 wrote 'he read the book'. For (iii), 31 were correct and 3 wrote 'he ate food and sleep went'. For (iv), 19 wrote 'the disciple did not forget the teacher' and 11 produced a correct passive rendering. The examiner wants to deduct marks for awkward Punjabi word order as well as for errors of meaning. You must fix the rubric before second marking.
1. Set the correct rendering for (i) and (ii), and score the recorded answers.
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(i) गन्तव्य is a kṛtya (tavya) form meaning 'to be gone', i.e. one ought to go or must go; with the agent in tṛtīyā (मया) and the negation, the sense is prohibition: 'I must not go to the village'. The 14 past-tense answers have read a past tense into a gerundive, which destroys the very point of the sentence, so 1 of 3 (agent right, mood and tense wrong). The 6 literal answers keep the meaning but not the target language, so 2 of 3, losing only the idiom mark.
(ii) पठ्यते is present passive: 'the book is read by him', rendered idiomatically as 'he reads the book'. It is not past. The 22 'he read the book' scripts change tense and voice together: 1 of 3. The tṛtīyā agent becoming the subject in Punjabi/Hindi is exactly what this item tests, so a script that keeps 'by him' as an oblique phrase still earns full marks provided the target sentence is one a speaker would actually use.
2. Handle (iii) and (iv): what rule is being tested, and what does each error actually cost?
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(iii) The ktvā (absolutive) shares its subject with the main clause, so the eater and the sleeper must be the same person: 'having eaten, he went to sleep'. The three scripts that produced 'he ate food and sleep went' have split the shared subject and made निद्रा the goer. This looks like a vocabulary slip but is a syntax error, and it changes the meaning, so 1 of 3.
(iv) विस्मर्तव्य is again a gerundive with the agent in tṛtīyā: 'the teacher is not to be forgotten by the disciple', i.e. 'the disciple must not forget the teacher'. Both the passive rendering and the active Punjabi version are correct. The 19 scripts have the right agent and the right meaning but have dropped the obligation: कṛtya means 'ought', not 'did'. So 2 of 3, losing the mood mark; where the target language has a natural 'should not', require it. Write both failure modes - split absolutive subject, lost obligation - on the scheme with their cost, so the second examiner applies one rule to all 38 scripts.
3. Write the rubric: how are the 3 marks split, and how is word order to be treated without penalising a script twice?
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Split each item 2 + 1: two marks for meaning (agent, action, tense and mood, and the relation between them) and one for idiom, meaning natural target-language order plus a correct rendering of kṛtya and ktvā. Never let one fault cost two marks.
Sanskrit word order is free and carries emphasis, so a Punjabi sentence that copies Sanskrit order ('by him the book is read') is not a language crime to be punished under both headings; it is precisely what the idiom mark is for. What must be penalised, once each: a changed agent (तेन rendered as 'I'), a changed tense (पठ्यते rendered as 'read'), a lost obligation (गन्तव्य rendered as 'went'), and a split absolutive subject. Print those four failure modes with their cost, add one model rendering per sentence, and have both examiners mark the same six scripts before the remaining thirty-two. Record the model renderings with the paper so the standard survives the examiner.