-stan "koborsthan" ( "") "graveyard/cemetery", known as "Qabaristan" as (). Originally an independent noun, this morpheme evolved into a suffix by virtue of appearing frequently as the last part in nominal compounds. It is of Indo-Iranian and ultimately Indo-European origin: It is cognate with Sanskrit "" (Devanagari: ), meaning "the act of standing", from which many further meanings derive, including "place, location; abode, dwelling", and ultimately descends from Proto-Indo-Iranian . The Proto-Indo-European root from which this noun is derived is (older reconstruction ) "to stand" (or "to stand up, to step (somewhere), to position (oneself)"), which is also the source of
Proto-Indo-European verbs the later Indo-European languages. In groups such as Germanic and Italic, the athematic verbs had almost gone entirely extinct by the time of written records, while Sanskrit and Ancient Greek preserve them more clearly. At least the following sets of endings existed: Note that, from a diachronic perspective, the secondary endings were actually the more basic ones, while the primary endings were formed from them by adding a suffix, originally "-i" in the active voice and "-r" in the middle voice. The more central subfamilies of Indo-European have innovated by replacing the middle-voice "-r" with the "-i" of the active