determinate number of syllables.^65 The boundaries of the verse do not cut
into a word or accentual unit; very often the end of the verse coincides with
a syntactic pause. For prosodic purposes the verse is a continuum, the
words within it being treated as an unbroken stream of sound, divided into
syllables without regard to word division or sense pauses. Between verses this
continuity is broken.
There is a clear opposition of long and short syllables, a syllable being long
if it contains a long vowel or diphthong or if it ends in a consonant. A single
consonant between vowels is assigned to the second of the two syllables, but
where two or three consonants occur together (other than at the beginning
of the verse) they are divided between syllables, making the prior syllable
automatically long.^66 Where a short final vowel occurs before an initial vowel,
the two syllables are generally reduced to one, whether by amalgamation
(Vedic) or by elision of the first (Greek).^67 Other short vowels may in certain
circumstances be lengthened metri gratia. A long final vowel before an initial
vowel generally remains but is shortened by correption. The semivowels
i/i and u/u , as the second element of a diphthong, are treated as consonants
when the diphthong is word-final before an initial vowel.
A verse is given a recognizable identity firstly by the grouping of words
within it, so that in a longer verse there is usually a word-break or ‘caesura’
after a set number of syllables, and secondly by some degree of regulation of
the sequence of long and short syllables, particularly in the latter part of the
verse. Word accent plays no part.
Much the commonest species of verse in the Rigveda are:^68
(i)An eight-syllable line of the form ××××∪−∪− ||, used in three-
or four-line stanzas (called respectively ga ̄yatrı ̄ and anus
̇
t
̇ubh). A
variant type, preferred in some early hymns, has the ‘trochaic’ cadence
∪––∪−− ||.(^65) In many types of Greek verse (such as the Homeric hexameter) and in later Sanskrit verse
the number is subject to variation due to the optional substitution of two short syllables for one
long or vice versa. But this is not true of the Vedic hymns, nor of Lesbian lyric, which in this as
in some other respects evidently represents the older state of affairs.
(^66) In Greek there was an increasing tendency not to divide plosive + liquid groups ([pr], [kl],
etc.), so that a preceding short open syllable remained unlengthened, especially if word-final.
But this was clearly a secondary development.
(^67) Cf. J. Kuryłowicz in Cardona et al. (1970), 425 f.
(^68) For full details see Hermann Oldenberg, Die Hymnen des R
̇
igveda, i (Berlin 1888), 1–162;
E. V. Arnold, Vedic Metre (Cambridge 1905); B. A. van Nooten and G. B. Holland, Rig Veda.
A Metrically Restored Text (Cambridge, Mass. 1994), vii–xviii and 577–667; on prosody see
also Kuryłowicz (1973), 42–96. In the metrical schemes that follow, the symbol × denotes
‘indifferent quantity’, ∪–– ‘mostly long’, and ∪–– ‘mostly short’. The final position in a verse is
shown as long, but it may always be occupied by a short syllable, the full length being made up
by the pause at line-end. The dividers | || ||| represent respectively regular word-end (caesura),
verse-end, and strophe-end.
- Poet and Poesy 47