12 Facts About Sanskrit prosody

Sanskrit prosody metres include those based on a fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse.

Syllable, in Sanskrit prosody, is a vowel following one or more consonants, or a vowel without any.

Metres found in classical Sanskrit prosody poetry are sometimes alternatively classified into three kinds.

The metrical unit in Sanskrit prosody is the verse, while in Greek prosody it is the foot.

Sanskrit prosody allows elasticity similar to Latin Saturnian verse, uncustomary in Greek prosody.

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Seven major ancient Sanskrit prosody metres are the three 8-syllable Gayatri, the four 8-syllable Anustubh, the four 11-syllable Tristubh, the four 12-syllable Jagati, and the mixed pada metres named Ushnih, Brihati and Pankti.

Beyond these seven metres, ancient and medieval era Sanskrit prosody scholars developed numerous other syllable-based metres.

Vedic texts, and later Sanskrit prosody literature, were composed in a manner where a change in metres was an embedded code to inform the reciter and audience that it marks the end of a section or chapter.

Similarly, the authors of Sanskrit prosody hymns used metres as tools of literary architecture, wherein they coded a hymn's end by frequently using a verse of a metre different from that used in the hymn's body.

Some editors have controversially used this metri causa principle to emend Sanskrit prosody verses, assuming that their creative conjectural rewriting with similar-sounding words will restore the metre.

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 prosody manuscript, or that the text is a compilation of works of different authors and time periods.

Hindu epics and the post-Vedic classical Sanskrit prosody poetry is typically structured as quatrains of four padas, with the metrical structure of each pada completely specified.