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Sanskrit metrics and prosody.

Texts, tables of metres, discussion, ...

Why Sanskrit metres?

The bulk of Sanskrit literature is in metrical verse: this includes "the poems and plays, the histories and legends, treatises on law, divinity, astronomy, mathematics, and indeed nearly all literature" (C. P. Brown).

Appropriateness

Kṣemendra says:

kāvye rasānusāreṇa
varṇanānuguṇena ca /
kurvīta sarvavṛttānāṃ
viniyogaṃ vibhāgavit //

Definitions

• hrasva (short) vowels are a, i, u, ṛ and ḷ (this last is a rare letter and can for all purposes be ignored in poetry). All the rest are dīrgha.
• A syllable (TODO: this should actually be defined clearly!) is laghu (light) if the vowel it contains is hrasva and is followed (until the next vowel) by either no consonant, or by exactly one consonant (which is treated as part of the next syllable).
• Else (i.e. if the syllable contains a dīrgha (or even pluta!) vowel, or if the vowel in the syllable is followed by a cluster of multiple consonants), the syllable is guru (heavy).
• As the syllable's weight (laghu/guru) is thus immediately apparent, the scansion is straightforward. When it is desired to be noted explicitly anyway, the notation used for laghu and guru varies: some authors use symbols that look like U and |, some use the opposite. We shall use L for laghu and G for guru.

Metres

All padyas (verses) may be classified as vṛtta or jāti:

• vṛtta: The weight of each syllable is regulated,
• jāti: The total weight of the line is regulated.

Yati

Yati / virāma.

• "Sentential pause" after every hemistich (i.e. half the verse / two quarters). First one called half pause and indicated by "|", and second one called full pause indicated by "||".
• "Harmonic pause", caesura, after particular syllables.

Names of classes by length

There are names for vṛttas of each length. For example, metres with 12 syllables in each pāda are called jagati metres, those with 17 are called atyaṣṭī metres, etc. See Lengths for the full list.

Anuṣṭup

• Usually, it is two lines of: xxxxLGGx-xxxxLGLx
• But in the second half of the first (or less commonly, third) pāda, instead of the standard LGGx (ya-gaṇa, sometimes one also sees GGGx (ma-gaṇa), GLGx (ra-gaṇa), GLLx (bha-gaṇa), or LLLx (na-gaṇa). There are rules on what happens in the first half of the pāda in such a case. See next.
• Specifically, there are 18 allowed patterns of the 6 interior syllables, for an odd pāda:

MY xGGGLGGx
YY xLGGLGGx
RY xGLGLGGx
TY xGGLLGGx
JY xLGLLGGx
BY xGLLLGGx
MR xGGGGLGx
YR xLGGGLGx
RR xGLGGLGx
RM xGLGGGGx
MB xGGGGLLx
YB xLGGGLLx
RB xGLGGLLx
TB xGGLGLLx
MN xGGGLLLx
YN xLGGLLLx
RN xGLGLLLx
TN xGGLLLLx

(One observation: generally the substring 'LL' is banned in the first half of the pāda?)

• For an even pāda, there are 5 allowed patterns:

MJ xGGGLGLx
TJ xGGLLGLx
YJ xLGGLGLx
BJ xGLLLGLx
JJ xLGLLGLx

• TODO: Verify these rules with statistics.

Popular metres

Pādānta-laghu

• (CPB p.3) "The last syllable of each line, in the uniform metres, is long by rule; but in practice is free." and again on p. 9: "The last syllable in each line by rule should be long: in practice it is free: either long or short at pleasure".
• (Chandovallari p. 9) "At the end of a quarter a short syllable can be considered as long and a long syllable can be considered short as per the requirement of the chanda."

Āryā

Understanding Āryā and related metres seems a big challenge.

Āryā-gīti is two halves of 8 groups of 4 mātras each:

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 (= 12 + 20 = 32)
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 (= 12 + 20 = 32)

Āryā is two halves of 8 groups of 4 mātras, except that

• the 6th group in the 2nd half has only 1 mātra), and
• the 8th group in each half has only 2 mātras:

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 (= 12 + 18 = 30)
4 4 4 4 4 1 4 2 (= 12 + 15 = 27)

A further condition is that in all these metres,

• the odd-numbered gaṇas (here, groups of 4 mātras) in each half are not LGL, and
• the 6th group, in each half, is either L (if 1) or (if 4) LLLL or LGL.

Various names (pathyā, vipulā, capalā) and subdivisions, based on what is actually chosen where.

Daṇḍaka

Variable length.

Praise of Sanskrit prosody

(TODO: find source and context for all these; flesh out)

• The "Prosody is easy and beautiful" says Sir William Jones.
• The learned Chézy observes: "It is infinitely more rich and more ‍varied than that of Greek; and has no syllables of doubtful quantity." (C. P. Brown himself on p. 3: "All syllables are of a definite length, apparent to the eye; none are doubtful.")
• Colebrooke (Essays, ii.62) [...] "it is richer than that of any other language."