Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c15.3

c15.3

240. The ‘uneven lyric’ metres have been defined in § 27 as those which combine in one stanza verses of eight and eleven syllables. A list of such hymns has been given in § 186, and we have seen reason to believe that the dimeter and trimeter verses which they contain represent the earliest Vedic types of these two kinds of verse (§§ 196, 233). The irregularity shewn in these hymns as they stand in the Saṃhitā text is a further indication of their antiquity, since in the Rigveda proper we find that strictness of metrical regulation increases in the later periods.