Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c11.228

c11.228

(b) For the genitive plural in *-ām* we find in Groups I to III that rather more than half of the occurrences of *-aam* are at the end of dimeter verse: but this lends no great support to the view that the measurement had its origin in the constraining of catalectic dimeter verses into a normal measurement. In the later periods the use of the ending *-aam* in dimeter cadence has clearly become a convention, and no longer corresponds to the ordinary pronunciation: but in the pre-Vedic period the two forms must have been at least equally common: and though the longer form is not necessarily the earlier, yet for our present purpose it must be considered a real archaism.