The Old Indo-Aryan Tense System

Abstract

In describing the Old Indo-Aryan of his time and area, Panini accounts for a contrast among three past tense forms: aorist, imperfect, and perfect. In this system, both imperfect and perfect forms are used with reference to acts that took place in the past excluding the day on which an utterance is made. They contrast, however, in that the perfect is reportative, used of an act the speaker has not witnessed, while the imperfect refers to an act the speaker did witness. The claim has been made that the reportative use of the perfect is not vouchsafed by textual evidence. This claim is shown to be false. I consider here a narrative in two versions showing precisely the contrasts for which Panini accounts. In addition, I suggest a series of historical developments in Indo-Aryan leading to the early Middle Indo-Aryan use of the aorist as the dominant past tense form.