Exploring dhātus

The Dhātus section is an index of Sanskrit verbal roots. It is a place to move from a lexical question—such as what words are associated with √bhū?—to a compact record of the root and the words the corpus links to it.

Find a root

The index is ordered according to the source root list. Use the previous and next buttons or the page selector to browse it in groups of 50.

To search, enter at least three characters in IAST or Devanāgarī. The result list puts an exact match first, then sorts the remaining matches alphabetically. For example, searching dhṛ brings √dhṛ before longer roots that contain the same sequence. Press Escape or click outside the search area to clear the query and return to the original order.

Read a root record

Each root page begins with the root in IAST and Devanāgarī, followed by the available traditional and English meanings. Depending on the source record, it may also show:

• Gaṇa: the verbal class associated with the root;
• Pada: Parasmaipada, Ātmanepada, or Ubhayapada when that information is available;
• Upasargas: listed verbal prefixes and their supplied meanings.

These fields are source-derived metadata. A blank field means it was not supplied in the available root record; it is not a claim that the root lacks a class, voice, or interpretive history.

Explore linked words

The main part of a root page is its linked word family. The lists are organised by the beginning of a word’s IAST form:

• Root begins with the root’s normalized stem.
• Guṇa begins with the corresponding guṇa-grade form.
• Vṛddhi begins with the corresponding vṛddhi-grade form.
• Other contains linked words that do not fit those beginning-of-word patterns.

This grouping is a browsing aid, not a full grammatical derivation. Sanskrit derivation involves many processes—prefixes, suffixes, sound changes, compounds, and historical relations—that cannot be established simply from the first letters of a word.

Select any linked word to open its full available lemma entry in the right sidebar. The selected word is highlighted. The sidebar can show definitions, root information, corpus profile, occurrences, concepts, and related texts according to the data available for that lemma. Use Close in the sidebar to clear the selection.

Follow a useful path

One productive way to work is:

1. Search for a known root or open a root from a word entry.
2. Compare a few linked words from different groups.
3. Select a word to inspect its dictionary meanings and corpus distribution.
4. Follow its occurrences back into texts and read the relevant passages.

The word-to-root association reflects the corpus’s current lexical links. When an association is absent, ambiguous, or surprising, treat it as a prompt to inspect the dictionary entry and source context rather than as a final etymological judgment.