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The main principle of Vedic meter is measurement by the number of syllables. Literature regarded as central to the Hindu literary tradition was predominantly composed in Sanskrit, Indeed much of the morphology and linguistic "Veda" redirects here For other uses see Veda (disambiguation. The Rigveda ( Sanskrit sa ऋग्वेद ṛgveda, a compound of ṛc "praise verse" and veda "knowledge" The Yajurveda ( Sanskrit यजुर्वेदः, a Tatpurusha compound of yajus "sacrificial formula' + veda The Samaveda ( Sanskrit: सामवेद sāmaveda, from sāman "melody" + veda "knowledge") is third (in the usual The Atharvaveda ( Sanskrit: अथर्ववेद atharvaveda, a Tatpurusha compound of {{IAST|atharvan}}, an ancient Rishi The oral tradition of the Vedas ( Śrauta) consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic Mantras Such traditions The Brāhmaṇa s ( Devanagari: sa ब्राह्मणं are part of the Hindu śruti literature The Aranyakas (Sanskrit आरण्यक āraṇyaka) are part of the Hindu śruti, the four Vedas these religious texts were composed in The Upanishads ( Devanagari: उपनिषद् IAST: upaniṣad also spelled "Upanisad" are Hindu scriptures that constitute the core teachings The Upanishads ( Devanagari: उपनिषद् IAST: upaniṣad also spelled "Upanisad" are Hindu scriptures that constitute the core teachings The Aitareya Upanishad is one of the older "primary" Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad ( Sanskrit: बृहदारण्यक उपनिषद् is one of the older "primary" ( Mukhya The Isha Upanishad ( īśa upaniṣad, otherwise Ishopanishad īśopaniṣad or īśāvāsya upaniṣad) is one of the shortest of the Upanishads The Taittiriya Upanishad is one of the older " primary " Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. The Chandogya Upanishad is one of the "primary" ( Mukhya) Upanishads Together with the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana and the Brihadaranyaka The Kena Upanishad (kenopaniṣad is one of the older "primary" Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. The Muṇḍaka Upanishad is one of the older "primary" ( Mukhya) Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. Māndūkya Upanishad is the shortest Upanishads - the scriptures of Hindu Vedanta. The Kaṭha Upanishad is one of the older Mukhya "primary" Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. Prashna Upanishad ( IAST praṣnopaniṣad is one of the older "primary" Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. The Shvetashvatara Upanishad (Sanskrit Śvetāśvatara) (400 - 200 BCE is one of the older "primary" Upanishads It is associated with the Black The Vedanga ( vedāṅga, "member of the Veda" are six auxiliary disciplines for the understanding and tradition of the Vedas. See Shiksha (NGO for the Indian non-governmental organization The Sanskrit grammatical tradition of vyākaraṇa is one of the six Vedanga disciplines Nirukta ("explanation etymological interpretation" is one of the six {{IAST|Vedānga}} disciplines of Hinduism, treating Etymology, particularly Jyotiṣa ( Sanskrit jyotiṣa, from jyótis- "light heavenly body" also spelled Jyotish and Jyotisha in English Kalpa is one of the six disciplines of Vedanga, treating Ritual. Indian epic poetry is the Epic poetry written in the Indian subcontinent. The Rāmāyaṇa ( Devanāgarī: sa रामायण is an ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the Hindu sage ( Maharishi) Valmiki The following is a bibliography of Hindu scriptures and texts. Smriti (Sanskrit स्मृति " that which is remembered " refers to a specific body of Hindu religious Scripture If you are looking for the singer see Shruti Haasan. For other meanings see Śruti (disambiguation. For other meanings see Purana (disambiguation. The Puranas ( Sanskrit: sa पुराण purāṇa, "of ancient times" Darśana ( Darshan, दर्शन is a Sanskrit term meaning "sight" (in the sense of an instance of seeing or beholding from a root Pāñcarātra are Vaishnavite devotional texts dedicated to a single deity Sriman Narayana who manifests in different forms Tantras (" Looms " or " Weavings " refers to numerous and varied scriptures pertaining to any of several esoteric traditions In Hinduism a Stotra is a hymn of praise These hymns praise aspects of the divine such as Devi, Siva, or Vishnu. Dharmaśāstra is a genre of Sanskrit texts and refers to the śāstra, or Indic branch of learning pertaining to Hindu Dharma, religious The Nalayira Divya Prabandha (or Nalayira Divya Prabhandham) is a collection of 4000 verses (Naalayira in Tamil means 'four thousand' composed before 8th century The Tevaram ( Tamil: தேவாரம் Teva means "God" aram means "garland") denotes the first seven volumes of the Śrī Rāmacaritamānas ( Devanāgarī: hi श्री राम चरित मानस ( Hindi / Avadhi) is an Epic poem composed by the The Shikshapatri ( Devanagari: शिक्षापत्री is a text of two hundred and twelve verses written in Sanskrit by Bhagwan Swaminarayan The Vachanamrut of Bhagwan Swaminarayan is the most sacred and foundational scripture of the Swaminarayan faith. Ananda Sutram is the basic scripture of modern Yoga composed in Sanskrit by Shrii Shrii Anandamurti (1921-1990 in the year 1961 The metrical unit of verse is the pada ("foot"[1]), generally of eight, eleven, or twelve syllables; these are termed gāyatrī, triṣṭubh and jagatī respectively,[2] after meters of the same name. A ṛc is a stanza of typically three or four padas, with a range of two to seven found in the corpus of Vedic poetry. Stanzas may mix padas of different lengths, and strophes of two or three stanzas (respectively, pragātha and tṛca) are common.
Syllables in a pada are also classified as metrically short (laghu "light") or long (guru "heavy"): a syllable is metrically short only if it contains a short vowel and is not followed by consecutive consonants in the same pada. All other syllables are long, by quality (having a long vowel or diphthong) or by position (being followed by a consonant cluster. ) Comparison with the Avestan literature shows that originally there were no constraints on permissible patterns of long and short syllables, the principle being purely quantitative. Vedic prosody innovated a number of distinctive rhythms:
- The last four syllables of a pada, termed the cadence by Indologists, are usually iambic or trochaic. This is mainly a strict alternation in the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables, as the final syllable can be of either weight.
- A caesura is found after the fourth or fifth syllable in triṣṭubh and jagatī padas, dividing the pada into an opening and break before the cadence.
- The break very often starts with two short syllables.
- The opening shows an iambic or trochaic tendency in keeping with the cadence, though the first syllable can be of either weight, the alternation being in the second and third.
There is, however, considerable freedom in relation to the strict metrical canons of Classical Sanskrit prosody, which Arnold (1905) holds to the credit of the Vedic bards:
| “ | It must be plain that as works of mechanical art the metres of the Rigveda stand high above those of modern Europe in variety of motive and in flexibility of form. They seem indeed to bear the same relation to them as the rich harmonies of classical music bear to the simple melodies of the peasant. And in proportion as modern students come to appreciate the skill displayed by the Vedic poets, they will be glad to abandon the easy but untenable theory that the variety of form employed by them is due to chance, or the purely personal bias of individuals; and to recognize instead that we find all the signs of a genuine historical development. | ” |
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Classification
Arnold (1905) uses the term dimeter for metrical schemes based on the 8-syllable (gāyatrī) pada, there being a two-fold division of a pada into opening and cadence; and the term trimeter for schemes based on 11-syllable (triṣṭubh) or 12-syllable (jagatī) padas, the division being into opening, break and cadence.
The principal difference between the two forms of trimeter is in the rhythm of the cadence: generally trochaic for triṣṭubh padas and iambic for jagatī padas. Except for one significant collection, gāyatrī padas are also generally iambic in the cadence. The compatibility of iambic cadence underlies the significant variety of mixed meters combining gāyatrī and jagatī padas.
Dimeter Forms
Metres with two to six gāyatrī padas are named dvipadā gāyatrī, gāyatrī, anuṣṭubh, pańkti and mahāpańkti. Of these, only the gāyatrī and anuṣṭubh are frequently found.
Trimeter Forms
Mixed Forms
Traditional Literature
While Chandas (छंदः), the study of Vedic meter, is one of the six Vedanga ("limb of the vedas"), no treatises dealing exclusively with Vedic meter have survived. The Vedanga ( vedāṅga, "member of the Veda" are six auxiliary disciplines for the understanding and tradition of the Vedas. The oldest work preserved is the Chandas-shastra, at the transition from Vedic to Classical (Epic) Sanskrit poetry. Pingala ( पिङ्गल piṅgalá) was an ancient Indian writer famous for his work the Chandas Shastra ( chandaḥ-śāstra Later sources are the Agni Purana, based on the Chandas shastra, chapter 15 of the Bharatiya Natyashastra, and chapter 104 of the Brihat-samhita. Agni Purana, one of the major eighteen Puranas, a Hindu religious text contains descriptions and details of various incarnations ( Avatars of Vishnu These works all date to roughly the Early Middle Ages. The Early Middle Ages is a period in the History of Europe following the fall of the Western Roman Empire spanning roughly five centuries from AD 500 Vrittaratnakara of Kedarabhatta, dating to ca. the 14th century, is widely known, but does not discuss Vedic meter. The Suvrittatilaka of Kshemendra was also influential, and valuable for its quotations of earlier authors.
A well-known quantitative scheme in the traditional literature classifies the common meters according to the syllable count of a stanza, as multiples of 4: thus, dvipadā virāj (20), gāyatrī (24), uṣṇih (28), anuṣṭubh (32), bṛhatī (36), pańkti (40), triṣṭubh (44), and jagatī (48). This scheme omits the original virāj entirely (with 33 syllables) and fails to account for structural variations within the same total syllable count, such as the 28 syllables of the kākubh (8+12+8) versus the uṣṇih (8+8+12), or the 40 of the later virāj (4x10) versus the pańkti (5x8). More comprehensive schemes in the traditional literature have been mainly terminological, each distinct type of stanza carrying its own name. The classification is exhaustive rather than analytic: every variant actually found in the received text has been named without regard to any need for metrical restoration.
See also
Notes
- ^ corresponding to a "line" rather than "foot" of Western prosody. The Pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit, or Vedic accent for brevity is traditionally divided by Sanskrit grammarians into three qualities udātta
- ^ e. g. Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 3. 25-28
References
- Klaus Mylius, Geschichte der altindischen Literatur, Wiesbaden 1983.
- B. van Nooten und G. Holland, Rig Veda, a metrically restored text, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1994.
- E. V. Arnold, Vedic metre in its historical development, Cambridge, UP, 1905.
- H. Oldenberg, Prolegomena on Metre and Textual History of the Ṛgveda, Berlin 1888. Tr. V. G. Paranjpe and M. A. Mehendale, Motilal Banarsidass 2005 ISBN 81-208-0986-6
External links
- Appendix II of Griffith's translation, a listing of the names of various Vedic meters, with notes.
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