In western languages compounds are not considered a topic of Syntax. The fact of their being made up of two or more self-existent words — however important for the etymologist — has little or nothing to do with their employment in speaking or writing. In Sanskrit it must be otherwise. Keeping apart such compounds as have got any special meaning, which stamps them to unities (*1), there exists in that language an almost illimited freedom of expressing any kind of relations, grammatical or logical, by the way of compounding. Every moment the speaker and especially the writer of Sanskrit may have the opportunity of substituting compounds to the analytical mode of expression. For this reason, Sanskrit Syntax has to deal with compounds, as far as regards giving an account of the part they are acting in the phraseology and of the modes and ways how to employ them, whereas it is a topic of Sanskrit Etymology to expound their structure and their outer shape.
The three great classes of compounds, set up by vernacular grammar, are dvandva, tatprusha, bahuvrîhi. They include nearly all varieties as well of the simple compounds, which are made up of but two non-compound words, as of those, which are most intricate and of an immoderate length. Outside of them, there remains only the class of such compounds as are produced by putting together the preposition + the noun-case depending on it, as
(*1)
Such as
(*2)
(*3)
All compound adverbs, the former member of which is an indeclinable word, are comprehended by the general appellation avyayîbhâva (P. 2, 1, 5-16). Moreover this category contains some few kinds of compound adverbs, whose former member is a noun-case or an adj.; they are summed up by Pâṇini (2, 1, 17-21). — But compound adjectives are never styled avyayîbhâva, even if their former member be an indeclinable word. So for example when saying
西洋諸言語では、複合語は統語論の1トピックとしては見なされていない。複合語が2つ以上の自立語から成るという事実は、語源学者には重要であるけれども、読み書きにおけるそれらの用法にはほとんど、あるいはまったく寄与しない。サンスクリットにおいては、決してそうではない。深く結合した特殊な意味を持つもの(*1)を除けば、サンスクリットは、複合法によって、文法的・論理的なあらゆる種類の関係をほぼ無制限に表現することができる。サンスクリットの話者、そしてとりわけ筆記者は、あらゆる瞬間において、分析的な表現方法の代わりに複合語を用いる機会がある。このため、複合語の構造や外形を解釈するのが語源学のトピックであるのに対し、サンスクリットのシンタックスは、複合語が句法の中でどのような役割を果たしているのかであるとか、その使用方法や様式を説明するかぎりで複合語を扱わなければならない。
土着文法家により設けられた複合語の大分類は、
(*1)
(*2)
WhitneyのSanskrit Grammar §1310では、これを前置詞複合語(prepositional compounds)と呼ぶ。
(*3)
前分が不変化辞のあらゆる複合副詞は、一般名