Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c13.178

c13.178

Yet both these suppositions are demonstrably wrong. As a fact, long syllables in this place are almost twice as common as short; and so regularly is this the case, that in the whole Rigveda it would be hard to find ten successive dimeter stanzas in which the short syllable is equally common. Yet the poet had no difficulty in his material, for in the cadence he successfully achieves this very rhythm, in one period in nine verses out of ten, in another in ninety-nine verses out of a hundred.