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Sanskrit prosody

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60-570: Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas Sanskrit prosody or Chandas refers to one of the six Vedangas , or limbs of Vedic studies. It is the study of poetic metres and verse in Sanskrit . This field of study was central to the composition of the Vedas , the scriptural canons of Hinduism ; in fact, so central that some later Hindu and Buddhist texts refer to

120-502: A 5x5 varga or square: The alphabet is designed such that the difference between sounds is preserved whether you recite it horizontally or vertically. It was extended and completed with fricatives and sibilants , semi-vowels , and vowels , and was eventually codified into the Brahmi alphabet , which is one of the most systematic sound-to-writing mappings. Scholar Frits Staal has commented, "Like Mendelejev’s Periodic System of Elements,

180-500: A conductor and the sound produced by music players in any classical orchestra. In Sanskrit, the posture of the performer is an added dimension to those of pronunciation and gesture, together these empowered muscular memory with acoustic memory in the Hindu tradition of remembering and transmitting Sanskrit texts from one generation to the next, state Wilke and Moebus. The methodical phonetic procedure developed by Shiksha helped preserve

240-545: A goddess, and links the development of thought to the development of speech. The mid 1st-millennium BCE text Taittiriya Upanishad contains one of the earliest description of Shiksha as follows, ॐ शीक्षां व्याख्यास्यामः । वर्णः स्वरः । मात्रा बलम् । साम सन्तानः । इत्युक्तः शीक्षाध्यायः ॥ १ ॥ Om! We will explain the Shiksha. Sounds and accentuation, Quantity (of vowels) and the expression (of consonants), Balancing (Saman) and connection (of sounds), So much about

300-510: A long syllable is counted as two morae. Gaṇa ( Sanskrit , "group") is the technical term for the pattern of light and heavy syllables in a sequence of three. It is used in treatises on Sanskrit prosody to describe metres, according to a method first propounded in Pingala 's chandahsutra . Pingala organizes the metres using two units: Pingala's method described any metre as a sequence of gaṇas, or triplets of syllables (trisyllabic feet), plus

360-490: A participatory fashion. The reciter's mind and body are engaged, making language and sound as an emotional performance. The study of phonetics functioned to transform a Vedic text, which traditionally was composed as language-music, into a musical performance. Individual sounds in the Sanskrit have independent personalities, and the reciter helps develop their character and their timbre, state Wilke and Moebus. Naradiya Siksa,

420-582: A phonetics treatise on the Sama Veda explains this aspects of phonology with various similes, such as, Just as a tigress takes her cubs tightly in her teeth without hurting them, whilst fearing that she might drop them and injure them, so one should approach the individual syllables. Pratisakhyas are the oldest Shiksha textbooks of each branch of the Vedas. Later Shiksha texts are more specialized and systematic, and often titled with suffix "Shiksha", such as

480-703: A song; with the song – a chant; with the Tristubh – a recited stanza; With the stanza of two feet and four feet – a hymn; with the syllable they measure the seven voices. ॥24॥ Beyond these seven metres, ancient and medieval era Sanskrit scholars developed numerous other syllable-based metres ( Akshara-chandas ). Examples include Atijagati (13x4, in 16 varieties), Shakvari (14x4, in 20 varieties), Atishakvari (15x4, in 18 varieties), Ashti (16x4, in 12 varieties), Atyashti (17x4, in 17 varieties), Dhriti (18x4, in 17 varieties), Atidhriti (19x4, in 13 varieties), Kriti (20x4, in 4 varieties) and so on. In addition to

540-488: A supplemental branch of the Vedas , included teaching proper articulation and pronunciation of Vedic texts. It was one of six fields of supplemental studies, others being grammar (Vyakarana), prosody (Chandas), ritual (Kalpa), etymology (Nirukta) and astrology (Jyotisha, calculating favorable time for rituals). The roots of Shiksha can be traced to the Rigveda which dedicates two hymns 10.125 and 10.71 to revere sound as

600-486: A verse of a metre different from that used in the hymn's body. However, they never used Gayatri metre to end a hymn or composition, possibly because it enjoyed a special level of reverence in Hindu texts. In general, all metres were sacred and the Vedic chants and hymns attribute the perfection and beauty of the metres to divine origins, referring to them as mythological characters or equivalent to gods. The verse perfection in

660-470: Is Kedara Bhatta's Vrittaratnakara . The most exhaustive compilations of Sanskrit prosody describe over 600 metres. This is a substantially larger repertoire than in any other metrical tradition. The term Chandas ( Sanskrit : छन्दः/छन्दस् chandaḥ/chandas (singular)) means "pleasing, alluring, lovely, delightful or charming", and is based on the root chad which means "esteemed to please, to seem good, feel pleasant and/or something that nourishes, gratifies or

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720-430: Is a mnemonic for Pingala's gaṇas, developed by ancient commentators, using the vowels "a" and "ā" for light and heavy syllables respectively with the letters of his scheme. In the form without a grammatical ending, yamātārājabhānasalagā is self-descriptive, where the structure of each gaṇa is shown by its own syllable and the two following it: The mnemonic also encodes the light "la" and heavy "gā" unit syllables of

780-474: Is a Sanskrit word, which means "instruction, lesson, learning, study of skill". It also refers to one of the six Vedangas , or limbs of Vedic studies, on phonetics and phonology in Sanskrit . Shiksha is the field of Vedic study of sound, focussing on the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, accent, quantity, stress, melody and rules of euphonic combination of words during a Vedic recitation. Each ancient Vedic school developed this field of Vedanga , and

840-430: Is also known as Chandah sastra , or Pingala Sutras after its author Pingala . It is the oldest Hindu treatise on prosody to have survived into the modern era. This text is structured in 8 books, with a cumulative total of 310 sutras. It is a collection of aphorisms predominantly focused on the art of poetic metres, and presents some mathematics in the service of music. There have been numerous Bhashyas (commentaries) of

900-500: Is celebrated". The term also refers to "any metrical part of the Vedas or other composition". The hymns of Rigveda include the names of metres, which implies that the discipline of Chandas (Sanskrit prosody) emerged in the 2nd-millennium BCE. The Brahmanas layer of Vedic literature, composed between 900 BCE and 700 BCE, contains a complete expression of the Chandas . Panini's treatise on Sanskrit grammar distinguishes Chandas as

960-541: Is less common than syllable-based metric texts, but found in important texts of Hindu philosophy , drama, lyrical works and Prakrit poetry. The entire Samkhyakarika text of the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy is composed in Arya metre, as are many chapters in the mathematical treatises of Aryabhata , and some texts of Kalidasa . Indian scholars also developed a hybrid class of Sanskrit metres, which combined features of

1020-724: Is not possible. Pāṇini referred to svara as ac pratyahara . Later they became known as ac Akshara . Vyanjana means embellishment, i.e., consonants are used as embellishment in order to yield sonorant vowels. They are also known as Prani akshara ; that is, they are like a body to which life ( svara ) is added. Pāṇini's name for vyanjana was Hal Pratyahara , which were later referred to as Hal akshara . Vyanjana aksharas are divided into three types: Sparsa aksharas include syllables from ka to ma ; they are 25 in number. Antastha aksharas include syllables ya , ra , la and va . Usman aksharas include śa , ṣa , sa and ha . Each vowel can be classified into three types based on

1080-527: Is the foot. Sanskrit prosody allows elasticity similar to Latin Saturnian verse , uncustomary in Greek prosody. The principles of both Sanskrit and Greek prosody probably go back to Proto-Indo-European times, because similar principles are found in ancient Persian, Italian, Celtic, and Slavonic branches of Indo-European. The Vedic Sanskrit prosody included both linear and non-linear systems. The field of Chandas

1140-403: The jaṭāpāṭha , involved switching syllables, repeating the last word of a line at the beginning of the next, and other permutations. In the process, a considerable amount of morphology is discussed, particularly regarding the combination of sequential sounds, which leads to the modalities of sandhi . The Samaveda Pratishakhya, one of the earliest, organizes the stop consonant sounds into

1200-652: The Natya Shastra , chapter 104 of the Brihat Samhita , the Pramodajanaka section of the Manasollasa contain embedded treatises on Chandas . The metres found in classical Sanskrit poetry are classified into three kinds. Most of Sanskrit poetry is composed in verses of four lines each. Each quarter-verse is called a pāda (literally, "foot"). Meters of the same length are distinguished by

1260-463: The Shiksha scholars added Mudra (hand signs) to go with each sound, thereby providing a visual confirmation and an alternate means to check the reading integrity by the audience, in addition to the audible means. These Mudras continue to be part of the classical Indian dance tradition. This interplay of the gesture and sound in Sanskrit recital, state Wilke and Moebus, is similar to the gesture of

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1320-419: The bhashya tradition of Hinduism. Of the various commentaries, those widely studied are the three 6th century texts - Jayadevacchandas , Janashrayi-Chhandovichiti and Ratnamanjusha , the 10th century commentary by Karnataka prosody scholar Halayudha, who also authored the grammatical Shastrakavya and Kavirahasya (literally, The Poet's Secret ). Other important historical commentaries include those by

1380-486: The 11th-century Yadavaprakasha and 12th-century Bhaskaracharya, as well as Jayakriti's Chandonushasana , and Chandomanjari by Gangadasa. There is no word without meter, nor is there any meter without words. — Natya Shastra Major encyclopedic and arts-related Hindu texts from the 1st and 2nd millennium CE contain sections on Chandas . For example, the chapters 328 to 335 of the Agni Purana , chapter 15 of

1440-638: The Chanda sastra over centuries. These are: Chandoratnakara: The 11th-century bhashya on Pingala's Chandah Sutra by Ratnakarashanti , called Chandoratnakara , added new ideas to Prakrit poetry, and this was influential to prosody in Nepal , and to the Buddhist prosody culture in Tibet where the field was also known as chandas or sdeb sbyor . Vedanga Too Many Requests If you report this error to

1500-486: The Naradiya-Shiksha, Vyasa-Shiksha, Pari-Shiksha and Sarvasammata-Shiksha. The Pratishakhyas , which evolved from the more ancient Vedic Texts padapathas ( padapāṭha ) around 800 BCE, deal with the manner in which the Vedas are to be enunciated. There are separate Pratishakhyas for each Veda. They complement the books called Shiksha written by various authorities. Several Pratishakhyas have survived into

1560-510: The Rigveda, is approximately equivalent to the Greek iambic dimeter. The sacred Gayatri metre of the Hindus consists of three of such iambic dimeter lines, and this embedded metre alone is at the heart of about 25% of the entire Rigveda. The gaṇas are, however, not the same as the foot in Greek prosody. The metrical unit in Sanskrit prosody is the verse (line, pada ), while in Greek prosody it

1620-497: The Sanskrit alphabet A strictly symmetrical [Sanskrit] alphabet definitely has practical advantages in language teaching, but this is almost certainly not the reason for its highly complex structure. (...) A better explanation of the structural density is the striving for perfect and beautifully formed representation of the object of study. The rule of the grammarians show a similar striving for order. —Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus The Shiksha field of Vedic studies arranged

1680-457: The Sanskrit alphabet in a rational order, state Wilke and Moebus, each mapped to the anatomical nature of human sounds, from the back to the front – throat (at the very back), palate, palatal ridge, teeth and lips. The letters of the Sanskrit alphabet were further organized by the Vedic scholars into a magic square, making symmetrical and resonant alternate readings of the letters possible, such as top to bottom in addition to left to right. Further,

1740-458: The Vedangas. This is likely because Vedas were transmitted from one generation to the next by oral tradition, and the preservation and the techniques of preservation depended on phonetics, states Scharfe. The earliest Brahmanas – a layer of text within the Vedas , include some terms of art in the Vedic phonetics, such as Varna and Avasana . The Shiksha field was likely well developed by

1800-518: The Vedas and the Upanishads as the canons of Hinduism since the ancient times, and shared by various Hindu traditions. Shiksha literally means "instruction, lesson, study, knowledge, learning, study of skill, training in an art". It also refers to one of the six Vedangas , which studies sound, Sanskrit phonetics, laws of euphonic combination ( sandhi ), and the science of making language pleasant and understood without mistakes. Shiksha as

1860-427: The Vedas as Chandas . The Chandas, as developed by the Vedic schools, were organized around seven major metres, each with its own rhythm, movements and aesthetics. Sanskrit metres include those based on a fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse. Extant ancient manuals on Chandas include Pingala 's Chandah Sutra , while an example of a medieval Sanskrit prosody manual

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1920-522: The Vedas without the slightest variants in the most faithful way possible. It made the Vedas and embedded Principal Upanishads the canonical scriptures of Hinduism. The rules and symmetric of Siksa helped the student to master enormous volumes of knowledge, and use the embedded codes and rules to self check his memory. However, state Wilke and Moebus, the Shiksha methodology has been not just highly technical, it has strong aesthetic "sensuous, emotive" dimension, which foster thinking and intellectual skills in

1980-507: The Vedic texts, verse Upanishads and Smriti texts has led some Indologists from the 19th century onwards to identify suspected portions of texts where a line or sections are off the expected metre. Some editors have controversially used this metri causa principle to emend Sanskrit verses, assuming that their creative conjectural rewriting with similar-sounding words will restore the metre. This practice has been criticized, states Patrick Olivelle , because such modern corrections may be changing

2040-523: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 536502129 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:43:07 GMT Shiksha Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas Shiksha ( Sanskrit : शिक्षा , IAST : śikṣā )

2100-499: The classical era are known, in which some 850 metres were defined and studied by the ancient and medieval Hindu scholars. The ancient Chandahsutra of Pingala , also called Pingala Sutras , is the oldest Sanskrit prosody text that has survived into the modern age, and it is dated to between 600 and 200 BCE. Like all Sutras , the Pingala text is distilled information in the form of aphorisms, and these were widely commented on through

2160-461: The duration of pronunciation ( morae ): We see that each vowel can be pronounced in three ways according to the duration of articulation. The unit of time is a mātra , which is approximately 0.2 seconds. It is approximately 0.2 seconds because 1 prana (1 respiration) is 10 long syllables or approximately 4 seconds and a long syllable is counted as two morae (mātra), thus 4÷(10×2) = 0.2. Each vowel can be further classified into two types based on

2220-536: The excess, if any, as single units. There being eight possible patterns of light and heavy syllables in a sequence of three, Pingala associated a letter, allowing the metre to be described compactly as an acronym . Each of these has its Greek prosody equivalent as listed below. Pingala's order of the gaṇas, viz. m-y-r-s-t-j-bh-n , corresponds to a standard enumeration in binary , when the three syllables in each gaṇa are read right-to-left with H=0 and L=1. The word yamātārājabhānasalagāḥ (or yamātārājabhānasalagaṃ )

2280-474: The four 11-syllable Tristubh, the four 12-syllable Jagati, and the mixed pāda metres named Ushnih, Brihati and Pankti. गायत्रेण प्रति मिमीते अर्कमर्केण साम त्रैष्टुभेन वाकम् । वाकेन वाकं द्विपदा चतुष्पदाक्षरेण मिमते सप्त वाणीः ॥२४॥ gāyatréṇa práti mimīte arkám arkéṇa sā́ma traíṣṭubhena vākám vākéna vākáṃ dvipádā cátuṣpadā akṣáreṇa mimate saptá vā́ṇīḥ With the Gayatri, he measures

2340-425: The four quarters are similar in pattern, Ardhasamavritta , where alternate verses have a similar syllabic structure, and Vishamavritta where all four quarters are different. A regular Vritta is defined as that where the total number of syllables in each line is less than or equal to 26 syllables, while irregulars contain more. When the metre is based on morae ( matra ), a short syllable is counted as one mora, and

2400-472: The full scheme. The truncated version obtained by dropping the last two syllables, viz. yamātārājabhānasa , can be read cyclically (i.e., wrapping around to the front). It is an example of a De Bruijn sequence . Sanskrit prosody shares similarities with Greek and Latin prosody. For example, in all three, rhythm is determined from the amount of time needed to pronounce a syllable, and not on stress (quantitative metre). Each eight-syllable line, for instance in

2460-408: The listener). These texts include Samhita-pathas and Pada-pathas , and partially or fully surviving manuscripts include Paniniya Shiksha , Naradiya Shiksha , Bharadvaja Shiksha , Yajnavalkya Shiksha , Vasishthi Shiksha , Parashari Shiksha , Katyayani Shiksha and Manduki Shiksha . Speech and soul? Having intellectually determined the object to be communicated to others, the soul urges

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2520-506: The manner of pronunciation: Each vowel can also be classified into three types, that is, pronounced in three ways, based on accent of articulation. This feature was lost in Classical Sanskrit , but used in reciting Vedic and Upanishadic hymns and mantras . Generally, in articulatory phonetics , the place of articulation (or point of articulation ) of a consonant is the point of contact, where an obstruction occurs in

2580-403: The meaning, adding to corruption, and imposing the modern pronunciation of words on ancient times when the same syllable or morae may have been pronounced differently. Large and significant changes in metre, wherein the metre of succeeding sections return to earlier sections, are sometimes thought to be an indication of later interpolations and insertion of text into a Sanskrit manuscript, or that

2640-437: The mind in order to give expression, i.e., to vocalize the thought rising within. The mind so stimulated acts upon the physical fire which in its turn brings about a movement in the region of internal air. The internal air thus moved gets upward till it reaches the vocal apparatus. — Pāninīya-śikṣā Shiksha , states Hartmut Scharfe, was the first branch of linguistics to develop as an independent Vedic field of study among

2700-512: The modern era, and these texts refine the structure of sound at different levels of nuance, some adding many more letters to the basic set in the Sanskrit alphabet: The Shiksha Texts and the Pratishakhyas led to great clarity in understanding the surface structure of language. For clarity of pronunciation, they broke up the large Vedic compounds into word stems , prefixes, and suffixes. Certain styles of recitation ( pāṭha ), such as

2760-558: The oldest surviving phonetic textbooks are the Pratishakyas . The Paniniya-Shiksha and Naradiya-Shiksha are examples of extant ancient manuscripts of this field of Vedic studies. Shiksha is the oldest and the first auxiliary discipline to the Vedas , maintained since the Vedic era. It aims at construction of sound and language for synthesis of ideas, in contrast to grammarians who developed rules for language deconstruction and understanding of ideas. This field helped preserve

2820-530: The pattern of laghu ("light") and guru ("heavy") syllables in the pāda . The rules distinguishing laghu and guru syllables are the same as those for non-metric prose, and these are specified in Vedic Shiksha texts that study the principles and structure of sound, such as the Pratishakhyas . Some of the significant rules are: Metre is a veritable ship, for those who want to go, across

2880-514: The requirement of the metre. Exceptions also apply to special sounds, of the type प्र, ह्र, ब्र and क्र. A stanza ( śloka ) is defined in Sanskrit prosody as a group of four quarters ( pāda s). Indian prosody studies recognise two types of stanzas. Vritta stanzas are those that have a precise number of syllables, while jati stanzas are those that are based on syllabic time-lengths (morae, matra ) and can contain varying numbers of syllables. The vritta stanzas have three forms: Samavritta , where

2940-703: The study of Shiksha. || 1 || Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus date the Shiksha text of the Taittiriya Vedic school to be from 600 BCE at the latest. Texts such as this established, among other things, a rational order of the Sanskrit alphabet, state Wilke and Moebus. Other texts, such as Vyasa-Siksa of the Krishna Yajurveda , were composed later. The ancient Vedic schools developed major treatises analyzing sound, vowels and consonants, rules of combination and pronunciation to assist clear understanding, to avoid mistakes and for resonance (pleasing to

3000-472: The syllable-based metres and morae-based metres. These were called Matra-chandas . Examples of this group of metres include Vaitaliya , Matrasamaka and Gityarya . The Hindu texts Kirātārjunīya and Naishadha Charita , for instance, feature complete cantos that are entirely crafted in the Vaitaliya metre. The Vedic texts, and later Sanskrit literature, were composed in a manner where a change in metres

3060-465: The syllable-based metres, Hindu scholars in their prosody studies, developed Gana-chandas or Gana-vritta , that is metres based on mātrās (morae, instants). The metric foot in these are designed from laghu (short) morae or their equivalents. Sixteen classes of these instants-based metres are enumerated in Sanskrit prosody, each class has sixteen sub-species. Examples include Arya , Udgiti , Upagiti , Giti and Aryagiti . This style of composition

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3120-621: The text is a compilation of works of different authors and time periods. However, some metres are easy to preserve and a consistent metre does not mean an authentic manuscript. This practice has also been questioned when applied to certain texts such as ancient and medieval era Buddhist manuscripts, as this may reflect versatility of the author or changing styles over author's lifetime. When halved, (record) two. When unity (is subtracted, record) sunya . When sunya, (multiply by) two. When halved, multiply (by) itself (squared). — Chandah Sutra 8.28-31 6th-2nd century BCE The Chandah Sutra

3180-662: The time Aranyakas and Upanishads layer of the Vedas were being composed. The alphabet had been categorized by this time, into vowels ( svara ), stops ( sparsha ), semivowels ( antastha ) and spirants ( ushman ). The field was fundamental to the ancient study of linguistics, and it developed as an interest and inquiry into sounds rather than letters. Shiksha , as described in these ancient texts, had six chapters – varna (sound), svara (accent), matra (quantity), bala (strength, articulation), saman (recital) and samtana (connection between preceding and following sounds). The insights from this field, states Scharfe, "without doubt

3240-1967: The varga system was the result of centuries of analysis. In the course of that development the basic concepts of phonology were discovered and defined. The Varga system and the Pratishakshyas, contributions of the Shiksha texts, are elaborate systems which deal with the generation and classification of sound. In addition, several Shiksha texts exist, most of them in metrical verse form but a few in sutra form. The following list contains some of these surviving texts: Amoghanandini Shiksha, Apisali Shiksha (in sutra form), Aranya Shiksha, Atreya Shiksha, Avasananirnyaya Shiksha, Bharadvaja Shiksha, Chandra Shiksha of Chandragomin (sutra form), Charayaniya Shiksha, Galadrka Shiksha, Kalanirnya Shiksha, Katyayani Shiksha, Kaundinya Shiksha, Keshavi Shiksha, Kramakarika Shiksha, Kramasandhaana Shiksha, Laghumoghanandini Shiksha, Lakshmikanta Shiksha, Lomashi Shiksha, Madhyandina Shiksha, Mandavya Shiksha, Mallasharmakrta Shiksha, Manasvaara Shiksha, Manduki Shiksha, Naradiya Shiksha, Paniniya Shiksha (versified), Paniniya Shiksha (in sutra form), Paniniya Shiksha (with accents), Parashari Shiksha, Padyaatmika Keshavi Shiksha, Pari Shiksha, Pratishakhyapradipa Shiksha, Sarvasammata Shiksha, Shaishiriya Shiksha, Shamaana Shiksha, Shambhu Shiksha, Shodashashloki Shiksha, Shikshasamgraha, Siddhanta Shiksha, Svaraankusha Shiksha, Svarashtaka Shiksha, Svaravyanjana Shiksha, Vasishtha Shiksha, Varnaratnapradipa Shiksha, Vyaali Shiksha, Vyasa Shiksha, Yajnavalkya Shiksha Although many of these Shiksha texts are attached to specific Vedic schools, others are late texts. Traditionally syllables (not letters) in Sanskrit are called Akshara , meaning "imperishable (entity)": "atoms" of speech, as it were. These aksharas are classified mainly into two types: Svara aksharas are also known as prana akshara ; i.e., they are main sounds in speech, without which speech

3300-418: The vast ocean of poetry. — Dandin , 7th century For measurement by mātrā (morae), laghu syllables count as one unit, and guru syllables as two units. The Indian prosody treatises crafted exceptions to these rules based on their study of sound, which apply in Sanskrit and Prakrit prosody. For example, the last vowel of a verse, regardless of its natural length, may be considered short or long according to

3360-526: The verses that compose the Vedas, from Bhāṣā (Sanskrit: भाषा), the language spoken by people for everyday communication. Vedic Sanskrit texts employ fifteen metres. Seven are common, and the most frequent three are 8-, 11- and 12-syllable lines. Post-Vedic texts, such as the epics as well as other classical literature of Hinduism, deploy both linear and non-linear metres, many of which are based on syllables and others based on repeating numbers of morae (matra per foot). About 150 treatises on Sanskrit prosody from

3420-476: The vocal tract between an active (moving) articulator (typically some part of the tongue) and a passive (stationary) articulator (typically some part of the roof of the mouth). But according to Indian linguistic tradition, there are five passive places of articulation: Apart from that, other articulations are combinations of the above five places: There are three active places of articulation: Effort (or manner ) of articulation ( Uccāraṇa Prayatna )

3480-407: Was an embedded code to inform the reciter and audience that it marks the end of a section or chapter. Each section or chapter of these texts uses identical metres, rhythmically presenting their ideas and making it easier to remember, recall and check for accuracy. Similarly, the authors of Sanskrit hymns used metres as tools of literary architecture, wherein they coded a hymn's end by frequently using

3540-436: Was applied by Vedic scholars to the art of writing". It also impacted the development of Indic scripts and evolution of language in countries that sought Indian texts or were influenced by Indian religions. According to Scharfe, and other scholars, the insights developed in this field, over time, likely also influenced phonetic scripts in parts of East Asia, as well as Arabic grammarian Khalil in 8th-century CE. Shiksha and

3600-401: Was organized around seven major metres, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, called the "seven birds" or "seven mouths of Brihaspati", and each had its own rhythm, movements and aesthetics. The system mapped a non-linear structure (aperiodicity) into a four verse polymorphic linear sequence. The seven major ancient Sanskrit metres are the three 8-syllable Gāyatrī, the four 8-syllable Anustubh,

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