Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c17.26

c17.26

(ii) In tracing the history of single variations we have often needed to collect the occurrences from 1000 verses at one time, and sometimes from as many as 5000. But when the most important variations are combined, the history can be traced with equal certainty from comparatively small bodies of verse. Supposing that 10 variations have exactly the same history, we can trace this with the same accuracy either by observing a single variation in 1000 verses, or all together in 100 verses. In fact the archaic variations are so numerous that we have little difficulty in recognising a hymn of archaic type by its metre, even if it only includes from 25 to 50 verses: but in the other periods the evidence is less direct, and cannot be very clearly followed unless we can first group on some other ground hymns containing together from 100 to 200 verses. The extreme shortness and fewness of the dimeter hymns in the family books greatly hamper the application of the metrical evidence, and we can therefore do little more than assume that in each Mandala the dimeter hymns are probably of the same date as those in trimeter verse.