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Dr. K. R. Chandra
He defines the old Arya metre as follows:
It has two pādas, every pāda ( feet) has 30 mātrās like later giti but the yati caesura does not fall on the 12th mātrā or on the final mātrā of the third gana but it falls on the syllable next to it which may be small or long and this syllable is independent and here the first half of the pāda closes. This independent syllable constitutes fourth gana with the initial word or words of the second half of every pāda. He further remarks that there are regularly 30 mātrās in each pāda, but sometimes this last syllable of the first half pāda is found to be an additional syllable. The second gana of odd pāda and the sixth gana of even pāda is generally TUT jagana, sometimes having four VVUU short mātrās. He has also given the numerical strength of first to third and fifth to seventh ganas with the mātric scheme that is available in them. He has also given the total number of corrupt and deficient pādas with the variant schemes available in them.
Now my purpose is to examine these corrupt and deficient pādas as well as other verses also of the first section only to see how far they are metrically perfect.
When I examine them from this angle I find that certain corrupt and deficient pādas and ganas can be emended to confirm with the scheme of the old Arya and again I find that there are several other cases where the metre is not regular and many of them can also be regularised, though Dr. Alsdorf is silent about them.
According to Alsdorf there are 9 cases from the first section which are deficient and corrupt. When I examined them I could find that 6 of them could be. corrected on the lines of the method adopted by) Alsdorf himself.
Now let us have some idea of the method employed by him. He has made here and there the following types of alterations at a number of places
He has : 1. lengthened short vowel i ri. 2. shortened long vowel ă = a,i =i.
3. changed the vowel with anusvāra into a vowel with anunāsika, e.g. ań ) = an (3), im = in, him = hin, e = en, o = on.
4. dropped anusvāra. 5. dropped one or two syllables. 6. added one or two syllables. 7. replaced a word by another word.
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