Chanda
Sanskrit prosody or Chandas refers to one of the six Vedangas, or limbs of Vedic studies.James Lochtefeld (2002), "Chandas" in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 1: A-M, Rosen Publishing, , page 140 It is the study of Metre (poetry), poetic metres and verse in Sanskrit. This field of study was central to the composition of the Vedas, the scriptural canons of Hinduism, so central that some later Hindu and Buddhist texts refer to the Vedas as ''Chandas''. The Chandas, as developed by the Vedic schools, were organized around seven major metres, and each had its own rhythm, movements and aesthetics. Sanskrit metres include those based on a fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse. Extant ancient manuals on Chandas include Pingala's ''Chandah Sutra'', while an example of a medieval Sanskrit prosody manual is Kedara Bhatta's ''Vrittaratnakara''. The most exhaustive compilations of Sanskrit prosody describe over 600 metres. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vedanga
The Vedanga ( sa, वेदाङ्ग ', "limbs of the Veda") are six auxiliary disciplines of Hinduism that developed in ancient times and have been connected with the study of the Vedas:James Lochtefeld (2002), "Vedanga" in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 1: A-M, Rosen Publishing, , pages 744-745 List of the Vedanga #Shiksha ('): phonetics, phonology, pronunciation. This auxiliary discipline has focused on the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, accent, quantity, stress, melody and rules of euphonic combination of words during a Vedic recitation. #Chandas ('): prosody.James Lochtefeld (2002), "Chandas" in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 1: A-M, Rosen Publishing, , page 140 This auxiliary discipline has focused on the poetic meters, including those based on fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse. # Vyakarana ('): grammar and linguistic analysis.James Lochtefeld (2002), "Vyakarana" in The Illustrated En ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Janashrayi-Chhandovichiti
''Janashrayi-Chhandovichiti'' (IAST: ''Jānāśrayī Chandoviciti'', also known as ''Janāśraya-chandas'') is a 6th or 7th century Sanskrit-language work on prosody. The text was considered a lost work, until its fragments were discovered in the 20th century. Authorship The text is written in the form of ''sutra'' (actual content) with ''vritti'' (explanation or commentary). The opening stanza of the book praises a king named Janashraya (IAST: Janāśraya) as follows: The text names Ganasvamin as its commentator. According to one theory, Janashraya authored the text, and Ganasvamin wrote a commentary on it. However, the commentator does not name Janashraya as the text's author, and makes no mention of the king's poetic or scholarly talents while praising him. Therefore, it is possible that the work was composed by another person and Janashraya was merely the writer's patron. Date The text has been variously dated to 6th or 7th century, based on the possible dates for Jan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts (''śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one Shakha of the many survive today, namely the Śakalya Shakha. Much of the contents contained in the remaining Shakhas are now lost or are not available in the public forum. The ''Rigveda'' is the oldest known Vedic Sanskrit text. Its early layers are among the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language. The sounds and texts of the ''Rigveda'' have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the bulk of the ''Rigveda'' Samhita was composed in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent (see) Rigvedic rivers), most likely between 1500 and 1000 BCE, although a wider approximation of 19001200 BCE has also been given. The text is layered, consisting of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rig Veda, a colle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Molossus (poetry)
A molossus () is a metrical foot used in Greek and Latin poetry. It consists of three long syllables. Examples of Latin words constituting molossi are ''audiri, cantabant, virtutem''. In English poetry, syllables are usually categorized as being either stressed or unstressed, rather than long or short, and the unambiguous molossus rarely appears, as it is too easily interpreted as two feet (and thus a metrical fault) or as having at least one destressed syllable. Perhaps the best example of a molossus is the repeated refrain of ''no birds sing'' in the first and last verse of John Keats' poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (1819) especially for the way it forces the reader to slow down, which is the poetic essence of this metrical foot. The title of Lord Tennyson's poem "Break, Break, Break" (1842) is sometimes cited as a molossus, but in context it can only be three separate feet: Clement Wood proposes as a more convincing instance: ''great white chief'', of which an example oc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tribrach (poetry)
A tribrach is a metrical foot used in formal poetry and Greek and Latin verse. In quantitative meter (such as the meter of classical verse), it consists of three short syllables; in accentual-syllabic verse (such as formal English verse), the tribrach consists of a run of three short syllables substituted for a trochee. A "tribrach word" is a word consisting of three short syllables, such as Latin "shining" or Greek "you have".W. M. Lindsay (1919), ''Early Latin Verse'', pp. 105–6. An English equivalent would be a word with three short syllables such as ''Canada'' or ''passenger''. The origin of the word tribrach is the Greek , derived from the prefix - "three" and the adjective "short". Terminology The name is first recorded in the Roman writer Quintilian (1st century AD). According to Quintilian, an alternative name for a tribrach, was a "trochee": ("Three short syllables make a , but those who give the name to the prefer to call it a .") Quintilian himself referr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prosody (Greek)
Prosody (from Middle French , from Latin , from Ancient Greek (), "song sung to music; pronunciation of syllable") is the theory and practice of versification. Prosody Greek poetry is based on syllable length, not on syllable stress, as in English. The two syllable lengths in Greek poetry are long and short. It is probable that in the natural spoken language there were also syllables of intermediate length, as in the first syllable of words such as τέκνα /''tékna''/ 'children', where a short vowel is followed by a plosive + liquid combination; but for poetic purposes such syllables were treated as either long or short. Thus in the opening speech of the play ''Oedipus Tyrannus'', Sophocles treats the first syllable of τέκνα /''tékna''/ as long in line 1, but as short in line 6. Different kinds of poetry use different patterns of long and short syllables, known as meters (UK: metres). For example, the epic poems of Homer were composed using the pattern , – u u , ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as in ''Benelux'' (short for ''Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg''). They can also be a mixture, as in ''radar'' (''Radio Detection And Ranging''). Acronyms can be pronounced as words, like ''NASA'' and ''UNESCO''; as individual letters, like ''FBI'', ''TNT'', and ''ATM''; or as both letters and words, like '' JPEG'' (pronounced ') and ''IUPAC''. Some are not universally pronounced one way or the other and it depends on the speaker's preference or the context in which it is being used, such as '' SQL'' (either "sequel" or "ess-cue-el"). The broader sense of ''acronym''—the meaning of which includes terms pronounced as letters—is sometimes criticized, but it is the term's original meaning and is in common use. Dictionary and st ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function of the adjacent words. Sandhi belongs to morphophonology. Sandhi occurs in many languages, particularly in the phonology of Indian languages (especially Sanskrit, Tamil, Sinhala, Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, Pali, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, Malayalam). Many dialects of British English show linking and intrusive R. A subset of sandhi called tone sandhi more specifically refers to tone changes between words and syllables. This is a common feature of many tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese. Types Internal and external sandhi Sandhi can be either * internal, at morpheme boundaries within words, such as ''syn- + pathy'': ''sympathy'', or * external, at word boundaries, such as the pronunciation " ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sanskrit Poetry
Sanskrit literature broadly comprises all literature in the Sanskrit language. This includes texts composed in the earliest attested descendant of the Proto-Indo-Aryan language known as Vedic Sanskrit, texts in Classical Sanskrit as well as some mixed and non-standard forms of Sanskrit. Literature in the older language begins with the composition of the Ṛg·veda between about 1500 and 1000 BCE, followed by other Vedic works right up to the time of the grammarian Pāṇini around 6th or 4th century BCE (after which Classical Sanskrit texts gradually became the norm). Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the extensive liturgical works of the Vedic religion, while Classical Sanskrit is the language of many of the prominent texts associated with the major Indian religions, especially Hinduism, but also Buddhism, and Jainism. Some Sanskrit Buddhist texts are also composed in a version of Sanskrit often called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit or Buddhistic Sanskrit, which contains many ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Visarga
Visarga ( sa, विसर्गः, translit=visargaḥ) means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology ('' ''), ' (also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as: Visarga is an allophone of and in pausa (at the end of an utterance). Since is a common inflectional suffix (of nominative singular, second person singular, etc.), visarga appears frequently in Sanskrit texts. In the traditional order of Sanskrit sounds, visarga and anusvāra appear between vowels and stop consonants. The precise pronunciation of visarga in Vedic texts may vary between Śākhās. Some pronounce a slight echo of the preceding vowel after the aspiration: will be pronounced , and will be pronounced . Visarga is not to be confused with colon. Types The visarga is commonly found in writing, resembling the punctuation mark of colon or as two tiny circles one above the other. This form is retained by most Indian s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anusvara
Anusvara (Sanskrit: ') is a symbol used in many Indic scripts to mark a type of nasal sound, typically transliterated . Depending on its location in the word and the language for which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary. In the context of ancient Sanskrit, ''anusvara'' is the name of the particular nasal sound itself, regardless of written representation. Sanskrit In Vedic Sanskrit, the anusvāra (lit. "after-sound" or "subordinate sound") was an allophonic (derived) nasal sound. The exact nature of the sound has been subject to debate. The material in the various ancient phonetic treatises points towards different phonetic interpretations, and these discrepancies have historically been attributed to either differences in the description of the same pronunciation or to dialectal or diachronic variation. In a 2013 reappraisal of the evidence, Cardona concludes that these reflect real dialectal differences. The environments in which the anusvara could arise, however, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |