kena instr. ind. (fr. 2. ka), by what? ŚBr. iv; MBh. i, ch. 3

whence? MBh. xiii, 2167; R. vi, 12, 4

how? why? Pañcat.; Bhartṛ.

kim ind. (fr. 1. ki, originally nom. and acc. sg. n. of 2. ka, q.v.), what? how? whence? wherefore? why?

kim is much used as a particle of interrogation like the Lat. num, an, sometimes translatable by ‘whether?’ but oftener serving only like a note of interrogation to mark a question (e.g. kiṃ vyādhā vane 'smin saṃcaranti, ‘do hunters roam about in this wood?’ In an interrogation the verb, if uncompounded with a preposition, generally retains its accent after kim, Pāṇ. viii, 1, 44). To this sense may be referred the kim expressing inferiority, deficiency, &c. at the beginning of compounds (e.g. kiṃ-rājan, what sort of king? i.e. a bad king, Pāṇ. ii, 1, 64; v, 4, 70)

1. ka the first consonant of the alphabet, and the first guttural letter (corresponding in sound to k in keep or king).

2. ka kas, kā, kim, interrog. pron. (see kim and 2. kad, and cf. the following words in which the interrogative base ka appears, katama, katara, kati, katham, kadā, karhi, kā, &c.), who? which? what? In its declension ka follows the pronoun tad except in nom. acc. sing. neut., where kim has taken the place of kad or kat in classical Sanskṛt; but the old form kad is found in the Veda (see Gram. 227);