Sanskrit Grammar Day (17) CHAPTER 7 Vowel Gradation and Why We Need to Know about It This chapter explains the systematics of the phenomenon of vowel gradation of which we caught our first glimpse in Chapter 3. It is meant to help us understand what has been introduced so far and complete our understanding of it by adding a number of details. It makes frequent reference to Chapter 2, particularly the sections on complex vowels and semivowels/glides. You may find it useful to look at those again. VOWEL GRADATION In Chapter 4, we saw that Class I verbs are formed in the following way: Class I: The vowel -a- is added into the root before the root vowel; then -a- is added after the root. Examples: √ भृ bhṛ ‘to carry’, root vowel: -ṛ-; present stem भर- bhara- √ बुध् budh ‘to awake’, root vowel -u-; present stem बोध- bodha- The step of adding an -a- before a...