A History of Sanskrit Literature c6.34

c6.34

There is an essential difference between Greek and Vedic prosody. Whereas the metrical unit of the former system is the foot, in the latter it is the line (or verse), feet not being distinguished. Curiously enough, however, the Vedic metrical unit is also called *pāda*, or “foot,” but for a very different reason; for the word has here really the figurative sense of “quarter” (from the foot of a quadruped), because the most usual kind of stanza has four lines. The ordinary *pādas* consist of eight, eleven, or twelve syllables. A stanza or *ṛich* is generally formed of three or four lines of the same kind. Four or five of the rarer types of stanza are, however, made up of a combination of different lines.