Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c4.14

c4.14

The current explanation of what I have termed the ‘variant final vowels,’ i.e. the final vowels of which the quantity varies in the Saṃhitā text, is derived from the unhistorical views of the native commentators, and is somewhat as follows. In certain positions in the verse metrical laws require long quantity: but the poets find themselves unable to provide words of the requisite measurement. They therefore introduce syllables of which the quantity is short, and give to those syllables an artificial long value by ‘poetical license,’ the syllables being thereby ‘metrically lengthened.’ This general theory is frequently asserted upon the authority of the two scholars who have dealt most fully with the question, namely TH. BENFEY and J. ZUBATÝ. But in fact the credit should rather be given to these writers of having shewn that the theory is untenable.