The benedictive mood is a grammatical mood found in Sanskrit, although rarely. It expresses a blessing or wish, such as found in the English expressions "long live the king" or "may the force be with you".
For verbs in the active voice (Sanskrit: parasmaipada), it is formed by adding endings very similar to the athematic optative endings directly to the verb root itself. Essentially, the sibilant Sanskrit: -s is inserted between the optative marker Sanskrit: -yā and the personal endings. By the action of the rules of Sanskrit: [[sandhi]], the second- and third-person benedictive endings are identical to the corresponding optative endings (Sanskrit: -yāst turns into Sanskrit: -yāt for the third person, and Sanskrit: -yāss into Sanskrit: yās for the second person).
Middle voice (Sanskrit: ātmanepada) benedictives are not found in Classical Sanskrit.
| Active | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||
| 1st Person | Sanskrit: bhūyāsam | Sanskrit: bhūyāsva | Sanskrit: bhūyāsma | |
| 2nd Person | Sanskrit: bhūyās | Sanskrit: bhūyāstam | Sanskrit: bhūyāsta | |
| 3rd Person | Sanskrit: bhūyāt | Sanskrit: bhūyāstām | Sanskrit: bhūyāsus | |