Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c14.117

c14.117

The consideration which seems decisive in favour of metrical interpretation by means of the ‘weak caesura’ in the latter instances is the extreme rarity of trimeter verses which cannot be explained in one or other of these ways. Undoubtedly the phonetic character of the Vedic dialect makes a pause of some kind at one of the points named almost unavoidable: but only a very strong metrical feeling for the necessity of such a pause can account for our finding only three trimeter verses in the whole Rigveda which have certainly no caesura of any kind, namely