Upasarga


Upasarga is a term used in Sanskrit grammar for a special class of twenty prepositional particles prefixed to verbs or to action nouns. In Vedic, these prepositions are separable from verbs; in classical Sanskrit the prefixing is obligatory.
The twenty prefixes are recognized in [Pāṇini|]'s [Ashtadhyayi|] at 1.4.58-59, and are enumerated in the [Pāṇini#Gaņapāțha|] :
  1. ati- "beyond"
  2. adhi- "over"
  3. apa- "away"
  4. api- "proximate"
  5. abhi- "to, towards"
  6. anu- "after"
  7. ava- "off, down"
  8. āṅ- "near"
  9. ut-/ud- "up"
  10. upa- "towards, near"
  11. dus-/dur- "bad, difficult, hard"
  12. ni- "down"
  13. nis-/nir- "away"
  14. parā- "away"
  15. pari- "round, around"
  16. pra- "forth"
  17. prati- "against"
  18. vi- "apart, asunder"
  19. sam-/saṃ- "with"
  20. su- "good, excellent"
By the usual rules of euphonic combination the two prepositions ending in visarga, ' and ', have the alternative forms nis-/nir- and dus-/dur- respectively. The listing has these variants, not the forms in pausa, and thus has twenty-two items in all.
A versified form of this list may be found in modern primers or textbooks: