(Hart, pp. 46-47)
Sanskrit like English has relative words such as “who”, “which”, ”where”, “if”, etc. In Sanskrit each relative, however, must have an accompanying correlative, such as “there” for ”where” and ”that” for ”which”. So, the sentence “I saw the king where he lives” in Sanskrit must be express as “Where the king lives, there I saw him“ or यत्र राजा वसति तत्र तम् अपश्यम् . The most common relative/correlative pairs are:
| Relative | Correlative |
| यदि (if) | तदा (then) |
| यद्यपि (even if, even though) | तथापि (still) |
| यदा (when, if) | तदा (then) |
| यत्र (where) | तत्र (there) |
| य (who, which) | स / अयम् / असौ (he, she it) |
| यथा (as, since) | तथा (so, therefore) |
These are mostly straightforward except for the use of य or “who”. In English, the relative clause comes directly after its antecedent. So we have “The boy, who is coming, is a brāhmaṇa.” In Sanskrit, the relative clause is never inserted after its antecedent, but stands apart outside of the main clause. The antecedent can either be included within the relative clause or in the main clause. So there can be:
यो बाल आगच्छति, स ब्राह्मणः । (“Who boy is coming, he is a brāhmaṇa.”)
or
य आगच्छति, स बालो ब्राह्मणः । (“Who is coming, that boy is a brāhmaṇa.“)
When relative words are doubled or repeated, they take on the added meaning of -ever. So, य य – “whoever”, यद् यद् – “whatever”, यदा यदा – “whenever”, यत्र यत्र – “wherever”, etc.