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FOREWORD
In
Ancient Indian metres are broadly divisible into three main classes: (1) Akṣara Vṛttas, (2) Varna Vṛttas and (3) Mātrā Vrttas. Aksara Vṛttas the metrical unit is an Akşara, whether short or long, and the classification of the metres is based on the number of the Akṣaras in a stanza. A stanza is usually divisible into three or four Pādas. Vedic Vṛttas are Akṣara Vṛttas and three main varieties of these are Gayatri, Triṣṭubh and Jagati. The Gayatri stanza has three Padas of 8 Akṣaras each, while the Triṣṭubh and the Jagati stanzas have four Pādas each, those of the former having II and those of the latter having 12 Akṣaras in each of them.
The Varna Vṛttas are really derived from the Vedic Aksara Vṛttas but the basis of their metrical music is not merely the number of intonated and accented Akṣaras as in the Vedic Aksara Vṛttas, but also a variation of short and long Akṣaras coming one after the other, in different order. The tendency towards such a variation is already noticeable in the Vedic Vṛttas, but it was not recognised as a source of metrical music as clearly as it was in the classical period. The metres in classical Sanskrit poetry are almost all of them Varna Vṛttas; they depend both upon the number of the Aksaras which their Pādas may contain and also upon the type of variation of the short and the long Aksaras employed in them. The starting of such metres is rightly attributed by Bhavabhuti in his Uttara-Rama-Carita to the Ādi Kavi, Valmiki. The first metre of this type is the Anuṣṭubh Sloka, which is the ruling metre of the Rāmāyaṇa.
The third variety of the ancient metres is the Matrā Vṛattas. The basis of the metrical music in these metres is a Mātrā, which is a unit of the syllabic content in an Akṣara. According to this principle of syllabic content, a short Akṣara contains one Matra and the long one contains two Mātrās' as their syllabic content. This principle was already recognised in the Pratis'akhyas though its employment as the basis of metrical music was left to the Sanskrit prosodists who made use of the purely Prakrita metres for their Sanskrit compositions.
