Tamil prosody defines several

metres The metre (British spelling Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable va ...

in six basic elements covering the various aspects of rhythm. Most classical works and many modern works are written in these metres. Tolkappiyam represents the older tradition in Tamil prosody while ''yapparungalam'' and ''yapparungalakkarigai'' represent the later tradition. The prosodic structure of literary works from the Sangam era has to be analysed according to the Tolkappiyam. The rules given in Yapparungalakkarigai are used in the scansion of later works.

Development

The development of Tamil prosody can be broadly broken into four stages. The first stage is predominantly indigenous, pre- Sanskritic and extra-Sanskritic. It is based on a basic metrical unit named ''acai'' which forms the basis for all the important classical metres of Tamil. The second stage () marks the influence of Sanskritic prosody on the Tamil metre and ends with the overwhelming incorporation of the ''akshara'' ( syllable) and ''matra'' ( mora) based metrics alongside the indigenous Tamil ones. The third stage is marked by the gradual coming together of poetry and music starting with the use of fixed melody types (') in

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and

Vaishnava Vaishnavism ( sa, वैष्णवसम्प्रदायः, Vaiṣṇavasampradāyaḥ) is one of the major Hindu denominations along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. It is also called Vishnuism since it considers Vishnu as the ...

Bhakti texts. The stage culminates with the spread of musical forms in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th-century. The final stage appears with the introduction of free verse and prose-poetry in the early 20th century.

Basic elements

The basic prosodic unit is the ''asai'' (''acai'') which is composed of ''ezhuttu'' (''eḷuttu''), the letters of the Tamil language or more accurately, the speech sounds in Tamil. Asais are the components of the

metrical foot The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. Th ...

or ''cīr'' which, in turn, are the components of the ''adi'' (''aṭi''), a line of poetry. Other elements include ''todai'' (''toṭai'',

alliteration Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...

) and ''vannam'' (''vaṇṇam'', "rhythmic effect", lit. colour or beauty).

Metres

Venpa Venpa or Venba ('' வெண்பா'' in Tamil) is a form of classical Tamil poetry. Classical Tamil poetry has been classified based upon the rules of metric prosody. Such rules form a context-free grammar. Every venba consists of between two ...

* Aciriyappa * Kalippa * vanjippa

Notes

References

* * * {{cite book, last1=Rajam, first1=V. S., title=A reference grammar of classical Tamil poetry : (150 B.C. - pre- fifth/sixth century A.D.), date=1992, publisher=American Philosophical Society, location=Philadelphia, isbn=9780871691996, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n6VhXLdmdKkC, access-date=31 May 2017 Tamil language Prosodies by language

Development

Basic elements

Metres

See also

Notes

References