Sanskrit case

Grammatical case was analyzed extensively in Sanskrit. The grammarian Pāṇini identified six semantic roles or karaka, which are related to the seven Sanskrit cases (nominative,accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative), but not in a one-to-one way. The six karaka are:

§  Agent (kartri, related to the nominative)

§  Patient (karman, related to the accusative)

§  Means (karaṇa, related to the instrumental)

§  Recipient (sampradāna, related to the dative)

§  Source (apādāna, related to the ablative)

§  Locus (adhikaraṇa, related to the locative)

For example, consider the following sentence:

vṛkṣ-āt	parṇ-am	bhūm-au	patati
from the tree	a leaf	to the ground	falls
"a leaf falls from the tree to the ground"

Here leaf is the agent, tree is the source, and ground is the locus, the corresponding declensions are reflected in the morphemes -am -at and -au respectively.