Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c10.13

c10.13

118. There are many verses in which the restoration of hiatus is doubtful, either because the normal number of syllables can be obtained in more than one way, or because the verses in question may be interpreted as decasyllabic or defective. In all such instances it will be reasonable to give the verse that interpretation which brings it as a whole most nearly into agreement with the metrical character of the hymn to which it belongs and the general rules of Vedic prosody. Thus it is generally desirable to assign to each verse a normal number of syllables, but if in a particular hymn the number of shorter verses is considerable, as in the hymns described in § 94 iii as decasyllabic, it becomes more probable that the particular verse is also shorter. Where the required number of syllables can be obtained in more than one way, there is usually one method which is in better agreement with the rules of prosody than any other. In this way the number of cases which involve any serious doubt becomes very small: the consideration of these cases in detail is reserved for the ‘Metrical Commentary’: the interpretation implied in the lists included in the text is always that which appears to the writer on the whole the most probable.