The Music of Hindostan c13.s2.83
The Music of Hindostan c13.s2.83
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c13.s2.83
The characteristic of the other great class of Sanskrit metres, those measured by time-unit (*mātrāvṛtta*), lies in the principle of equivalence, that is, in the fact which we are familiar with in the hexameter, that two shorts take the time of one long. *Mātrā* means instant, or unit; what the Greeks called ‘Chronos prōtos’, the ‘first’ or smallest ‘duration’ from which you start reckoning. Each foot contains four mātrās, and its prosodial possibilities are: