Malayalam poetry is poetry written, spoken, or composed in Modern, as well as
Old
Old or OLD may refer to:
Places
*Old, Baranya, Hungary
*Old, Northamptonshire, England
*Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD)
*OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...
and
Classical,
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
.
History
The history of Malayalam poetry dates back to the 12th century; the earliest poetic work in a near-Malayalam language, or what might be a mixture of Tamil and Malayalam, is the ''Rama Charitam.''
Meter
There are two types of
meters
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...
used in Malayalam poetry, also known as Kavita: the classical
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 ...
-based and
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
-based ones.
Sanskrit meters are primarily based on trisyllabic feet. The short sound is called a laghu, a long sound is called a guru. A guru is twice as long as a laghu. A guru is usually represented by a '-–' and a laghu by a '⌣'.
For easy specification of meters, the laghu's and guru's are grouped into feet (called ganam) as follows:
Additionally, individual gurus are also identified by 'ga' or 'gam' and laghus by 'la' or 'lam'.
For example, the definition for the meter 'Kalyani' is 'three thaganam + two gurus' indicating "- - ⌣ - - ⌣ - - ⌣ - -".
References
Further reading
*
*
*
Poetry movements
Indian poetry by language
Malayalam-language literature
Indian literary movements
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