A History of Sanskrit Literature c28.s4.1

c28.s4.1

Our authorities leave us wholly in the dark regarding the development of metre between the Vedic and the classical periods of Sanskrit, and it is hardly very profitable speculating exactly why there grew up in Sanskrit poetry the use of metres with a determined length of quarter-stanzas or lines, each line being built exactly on the same model, while the first two and the last two lines were more closely combined than the second and the third, between which a complete caesura was essential. We can, it is true, in the case of both the Çloka⁵ and the Triṣṭubh and Jagatī styles⁶ see the process of hardening going on slowly in the Vedic and epic literature, doubtless under the growing desire for symmetry which was offended by the freedom of the Vedic and epic verses. The definite rules regarding the close of the line came to be applied throughout, and, when this was complete, longer lines were essayed on the same principle. In these longer lines we find operative a principle which is dropped in the Triṣṭubh and Jagatī styles, that of caesuras in definite places, which were doubtless felt to be made necessary if the verses were to retain elegance of form; the definitions of the metres are careful to make it clear where these caesuras are to be, and normally good poets insist on having full caesuras at these points, that is the end of an inflected word, though weak caesuras, at the end of some member of a compound or of a prefix, may legitimately occur,⁷ and caesuras may be obscured by Sandhi.