The verses of the Vedas have a variety of different meters. They are divided by number of padas in a verse, and by the number of syllables in a pada. Chandas (), the study of Vedic meter, is one of the six Vedanga disciplines, or "organs of the vedas".

• 4 padas of 12 syllables

4 padas of 11 syllables

4 padas of 10 syllables

4 padas of 8 syllables, this is the typical shloka of later Hindu poetry

No treatises dealing exclusively with Vedic meter have survived. The oldest work preserved is the Chandas-shastra, at the transition from Vedic to Classical (Epic) Sanskrit poetry. Later sources are the Agni Purana, based on the Chandas shastra, chapter 15 of the Bharatiya Natyashastra, and chapter 104 of the Brihat-samhita. These works all date to roughly the Early Middle Ages. 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.

See also

• Vedic accent

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.

External Links

• The Vedangas (Organs of the Vedas): A summary
• Online course material for InSIGHT, a workshop on traditional Indian sciences for school children conducted by the Computer Science department of Anna University, Chennai, India.

Vedangas | Poetic form