The word adverb as we all are familiar with defines or tells us something about the verb. Like English has words to describe the action, Sanskrit to has its own sets of adverbs. As well have studied previously that Sanskrit has over 800 active verbs, hence, the need for adverbs comes naturally.
Just as in English, we add a suffix to adjectives to form adverbs, similar is the case in Sanskrit too. Look at the following example;
सुन्दरो नरो गच्छति
sundaro naro gacchati
The beautiful man goes.
सुन्दरं नरो गच्छति
sundaraṃ naro gacchati
The man goes beautifully.
You can see how सुन्दरो became सुन्दरं. There is a suffix added to the word, which transformed it form adjectives to adverbs.
Adverbs usually appear at the beginning of the sentence. The neuter singular case 1 of an adjective is an adverb.
सुन्दर → सुन्दरम्
sundara → sundaram
beautiful → beautifully, well, rightly
Adverbs being an important part of English language have been seemed to be missing that importance in the Sanskrit language. The reason being Panini, the known Sanskrit grammarian, has ignored the concept of adverbs to a considerable extent.
Instead, he had used a term called “avyay” and tied covering all the adverbs in that terminology. This does not mean that adverb did not exist; gradually adverbs started being used regularly in Sanskrit, which we will study throughout the course.
