Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c4.17

c4.17

Zubatý took up the matter about ten years later (1888–1891) from a rather different standpoint. Assuming that in all these forms the Vedic poets were free to choose either the long or the short syllable, in fact that the quantity was ‘doubtful,’ he argues from the quantity actually found in the Saṃhitā text to the metrical preferences of the poets. In this way he has no difficulty in shewing that current theories as to the Vedic metres were often founded on a very slender basis of fact. Notably he corrected an error into which all previous writers had fallen, in supposing that the poets preferred short quantity in the third syllable of each verse. This imagined ‘rule’ had been imported from Greek iambic verse into the supposed iambic verse of the Rigveda without any enquiry as to the facts. Zubatý’s work is remarkable for the completeness and orderly arrangement of his material, but unfortunately its publication was never completed.