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14
INTRODUCTION
12. Gāthā, known as Aryā in its Sanskrit garb, is certainly the earliest and the most popular metre of Prākrit prosody, Bharata, at Nātyaśāstra 16.151-163, gives all the details about the constitution of this metre and mentions its three main kinds, namely, the Pathyā, the Vipulā and the Capalā, not forgetting even the subdivisions of the last one. But he does not define any of the derivatives of the Aryā like the Gīti or the Gītikā and the Skandhaka. The only other Mātrā Vrtta which Bharata defines is the Vānavāsikā with a Pada containing 16 Mātrās divided into four Ambakas, i. e., Caturmātras. As said above in para 7, the Caturmātra is the only Mātrā Gaṇa which has very early infiltrated into Sanskrit prosody. Similarly Aryā, popularly known as Gathā, was the only metre borrowed by Sanskrit from the Prākrits. Its structure is unlike that of the pure Sanskrit Vịttas, which are either based upon Akşara or Varņa as their unit. Akşara Vrttas are the vedic metres whose Pādas were constituted with a certain number of Akşaras, whether short or long, while the Varņa Vrttas, which were evolved out of the Akşara Vịttas in course of time, are based upon a Varṇa which is of two kinds, short and long. While a number of Akşaras alone was essential for the former, a definite succession of the two kinds of these in addition to their number, was necessary for the latter. Metrical music in the Vedic Akşara Vịttas was controlled by the number of the Akşaras, now raised, now lowered in their pronunciation according to a scheme of word-accentuation introduced early in the speech-system of the Vedic people. The music of the Varņa Vịttas of Calssical Sanskrit, on the other hand, depended upon the pleasurable variation of the word - sounds produced by the different orders of succession in which the two kinds of Akşaras or Varņas followed each other in a metrical line. As against these two metrical systems, there exists a third in which metrical music arises neither from the number of raised or lowered Akşaras, nor from the order of succession of the two kinds of these Akşaras, but from the adaptation of the recitation of these Akşaras to a regularly recurring stress conveyed either by the movements of the body or by a musical instrument and controlled by the passing time measured with a uniform unit. Naturally in this system, the number of the Aksaras and the orderly succession of their two kinds played only a secondary role and they were employed as their use was inevitable in any vocal music intended to convey a meaning. But this association of the Akşaras and their
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