Sanskrit prosody or Chhandas (Sanskrit: छन्दः) refers to one of the six Vedangas, or limbs of Vedic studies.James Lochtefeld (2002), "Chandas" in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 1: A-M, Rosen Publishing, , page 140 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 the Vedas as Chhandas.
The Chhandas, 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 a fixed number of morae per verse.
Extant ancient manuals on Chhandas include Pingala's Chhanda Sutra, while an example of a medieval Sanskrit prosody manual 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.
Etymology The term Chhandas (Sanskrit: छन्दः/छन्दस्, IAST: 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 is celebrated". The term also refers to "any metrical part of the Vedas or other composition".
History The hymns of Rigveda include the names of metres, which implies that the discipline of Chhandas (Sanskrit prosody) emerged in the 2nd millennium BCE. The Brahmanas layer of Vedic literature, composed between 900 and 700 BCE, contains a complete expression of the Chhandas. Panini's treatise on Sanskrit grammar distinguishes Chhandas as 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 the classical era are known, in which some 850 metres were defined and studied by the ancient and medieval Hindu scholars.
The ancient Chhanda Sutra 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 the bhashya tradition of Hinduism. Of the various commentaries, those widely studied are the three 6th-century texts: Jayadevachhandas, 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 the 11th-century Yadavaprakasha and 12th-century Bhaskaracharya, as well as Jayakriti's Chhandonushasana, and Chhandomanjari by Gangadasa.
Major encyclopedic and arts-related Hindu texts from the 1st and 2nd millennium CE contain sections on Chhandas. For example, the chapters 328 to 335 of the Agni Purana,MN Dutt, Agni Purana Vol 2, pages 1219-1233 (Note: Dutt's manuscript has 365 chapters, and is numbered differently) chapter 15 of the Natya Shastra, chapter 104 of the Brihat Samhita, the Pramodajanaka section of the Manasollasa contain embedded treatises on Chhandas.
Elements
Classification The metres found in classical Sanskrit poetry are classified into three kinds. Syllabic verse (akṣaravṛtta or aksharavritta): metres depend on the number of syllables in a verse, with relative freedom in the distribution of light and heavy syllables. This style is derived from older Vedic forms, and found in the great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Syllabo-quantitative verse (varṇavṛtta or varnavritta): metres depend on syllable count, but the light-heavy patterns are fixed. Quantitative verse (mātrāvṛtta or matravritta): metres depend on duration, where each verse-line has a fixed number of morae, usually grouped in sets of four.
Light and heavy syllables 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 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:
A syllable is laghu only if its vowel is hrasva ("short") and followed by at most one consonant before another vowel is encountered. A syllable with an anusvara ('ṃ') or a visarga ('ḥ') is always guru. All other syllables are guru, either because the vowel is dīrgha ("long"), or because the hrasva vowel is followed by a consonant cluster. The hrasva vowels are the short monophthongs: 'a', 'i', 'u', 'ṛ' and 'ḷ' All other vowels are dirgha: 'ā', 'ī', 'ū', 'ṝ', 'e', 'ai', 'o' and 'au'. (Note that, morphologically, the last four vowels are actually the diphthongs 'ai', 'āi', 'au' and 'āu', as the rules of sandhi in Sanskrit make clear.) Gangadasa Pandita states that the last syllable in each pāda may be considered guru, but a guru at the end of a pāda is never counted as laghu.
For measurement by mātrā (morae), laghu syllables count as one unit, and guru syllables as two units.
Exceptions 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 the requirement of the metre.Lakshman R Vaidya, Sanskrit Prosody - Appendix I, in Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Sagoon Press, Harvard University Archives, pages 843-856; Archive 2 Exceptions also apply to special sounds, of the type प्र, ह्र, ब्र and क्र.
Stanzas A stanza (śloka) is defined in Sanskrit prosody as a group of four quarters (pādas). 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 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 a long syllable is counted as two morae.
Gaṇa 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 Chandah Sutra. Pingala organizes the metres using two units:Pingala CS 1.9-10, in order l: a "light" syllable (L), called laghu g: a "heavy" syllable (H), called guru
Pingala's method described any metre as a sequence of gaṇas, or triplets of syllables (trisyllabic feet), plus 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.Pingala, chandaḥśāstra, 1.1-10 Each of these has its Greek prosody equivalent as listed below.
+ The Ganas (गण, class)Pingala CS, 1.1-8, in order Sanskritprosody Weight Symbol Style Greekequivalent Na-gaṇa L-L-L u u u da da da Tribrach Ma-gaṇa H-H-H — — — DUM DUM DUM Molossus Ja-gaṇa L-H-L u — u da DUM da Amphibrach Ra-gaṇa H-L-H — u — DUM da DUM Cretic Bha-gaṇa H-L-L — u u DUM da da Dactyl Sa-gaṇa L-L-H u u — da da DUM Anapaest Ya-gaṇa L-H-H u — — da DUM DUM Bacchius Ta-gaṇa H-H-L — — u DUM DUM da Antibacchius
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.
A mnemonic The word yamātārājabhānasalagāḥ (or yamātārājabhānasalagaṃ) 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:
ya-gaṇa: ya-mā-tā = L-H-H ma-gaṇa: mā-tā-rā = H-H-H ta-gaṇa: tā-rā-ja = H-H-L ra-gaṇa: rā-ja-bhā = H-L-H ja-gaṇa: ja-bhā-na = L-H-L bha-gaṇa: bhā-na-sa = H-L-L na-gaṇa: na-sa-la = L-L-L sa-gaṇa: sa-la-gā = L-L-H
The mnemonic also encodes the light "la" and heavy "gā" unit syllables of 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.. Reprinted in Wardhaugh, Benjamin, ed. (2012), A Wealth of Numbers: An Anthology of 500 Years of Popular Mathematics Writing, Princeton Univ. Press, pp. 139–144.
Comparison with Greek and Latin prosody 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 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 is the foot.A history of Sanskrit Literature, Arthur MacDonell, Oxford University Press/Appleton & Co, page 55 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 seven birds: major Sanskrit metres The Vedic Sanskrit prosody included both linear and non-linear systems. The field of Chandas 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, the four 11-syllable Tristubh, the four 12-syllable Jagati, and the mixed pāda metres named Ushnih, Brihati and Pankti.
+ The major ancient metres in Sanskrit prosody Meter Structure MappedSequence Varieties Usage Gayatri 24 syllables;3 verses of 8 syllables 6x4 11 Common in Vedic textsExample: Rigveda 7.1.1-30, 8.2.14 Ushnih 28 syllables;2 verses of 8;1 of 12 syllables 7x4 8 Vedas, not commonExample: Rigveda 1.8.23-26 Anushtubh