Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c14.152

c14.152

216. The instances of consecutive short syllables in the second and third places in trimeter verse are about 650 in number, the proportion being slightly larger than in dimeter verse (§ 190). In fully one half of the instances the second syllable contains a short final vowel, or -a as representing final -ah or -e: for the final short vowel the text in several instances gives a long vowel, or substitutes -o for final -a (§ 171 iv). Only in some 33 instances do we find a similar short final vowel in the third place : and we therefore have repeated the phenomenon already noticed in dimeter verse (§ 189), that a short final vowel is specially capable of bearing the ictus if it occurs in the second place.