This book embodies mainly the results of the work done by me as a Senior Fellow of the Dravidian Linguistics Association at the University of Madurai during the period of one year from the Ist May, 1975. The problem which I was required to investigate was the Commonness in the Metre of the Dravidian Languages with particular reference to Malayalam. Another Senior Fellow of the Association, Dr. S. Subrahmaniam of the S. T. Hindu College, Nagercoil, bad already been engaged there in the study of the same problem with special reference to Tamil.
Unfortunately, by the time I reached there, Dr. Subrahmaniam had almost finished his work and was about to leave Madurai, with the result that I had only a few occasions to discuss with him topics of common interest and to compare notes. However the subject was not new to me as I had, as a Research Student in the Malayalam Department of the University of Madras from the 20th October 1944, to the 31st December, 1946, made an exhaustive study of Malayalam Metre, and had presented a thesis based on this study to the same University in August, 1947 for the Degree of M. Litt. Though the University had given me permission to publish the thesis, I could not, owing to various pre-occupations, turn my attention to its publication during the last three decades. The fellowship of the Dravidian Linguistics Association gave me an opportunity to apply my mind to the subject afresh, especially in the light of the studies in this field and significant material published in Tamil, Kannada and Telugu during the last 30 years. I could make use of the excellent collection of Tamil books in the Madurai University library, thanks to Dr. M. Shanmukham Pillai, Professor and Head of the Department of Tamil. I could also, before preparing the final draft of the present book, go through the first part of the report submitted by Dr. S. Subrahmaniam to the Dravidian Linguistics Association. Dr. T. Kodandaramayya, Professor of Telugu and Dr. P. S. Srinivasan, Reader of Kannada, in the University of Madurai gave me much of their valuable time to explain various points in the systems of Telugu and Kannada prosodies. They also went patiently through and corrected wherever necessary the notes on these two prosodies prepared by me, which are incorporated in this book as appendices II and III.
Though this study has only confirmed the main conclusions reached by me three decades ago, I have extensively revised and practically rewritten my earlier thesis, incorporating a lot of new material including one chapter on the metre of Ramakathappattu, a work which became available in print only in the year 1970. My approach in this study has been historical and comparative. In each chapter I have selected material in verse belonging to a particular era or a particular genre, discussed the date of the composition of such material and then gone into a detailed analysis of the metres employed therein. I have quoted in each chapter passages from the literary material thus studied, to illustrate the different metres and have adduced, wherever available, passages of comparable metres from other Dravidian languages, mainly from Tamil. In the survey of a period or genre which covers a wide range of works, it has been possible to take into consideration only those works that are the most representative of that period or genre. I have examined, for instance, only the works of Eluttacchan to shed light on the metres of the genre Kilippattu.
In order to acquire an insight into the fundamental principles of Malayalam prosody, it is necessary to compare it with the prosodies of other literatures, especially those of Sanskrit and Tamil; for the prosodies of Sanskrit and Tamil have exerted decisive influence, though in varying degrees, on the system of Malayalam metre from the very dawn of Malayalam literature. Now, metres in Sanskrit are mainly of three different categories, viz., Vedic. Varga and Matra. These three categories are based on three distinct principles.
Poetry is not music, and a poet need not be a musician; yet metre and music are closely and organically allied. In pure music the sense is subordinated to the sound, while in poetry a balance is kept between sound and sense. "Poetry is speech in which the instrument counts as well as the meaning; poetry is speech for its own sake and for its own sweetness.".
This sweetness of speech depends upon its musical quality. This quality is the result of different schemes or patterns of the raw-material of speech, viz., the sound. And the music, which is the basis of the three metrical systems in Sanskrit, is of three different varieties.
These three varieties of music are: (1) the music of voice-modulation or the Svarasangita; (2) the music of soundvariation or the Varnasangita and (3) the music of time-regulated accent or the Talasangita. The first variety depends upon the modulation. i. e., raising and lowering, of the human voice. The second variety is produced by "pleasant variation of short and long sounds which are employed in the composition of a metrical line." In the third variety, "the music is produced by means of tressing the voice or sound after the lapse of a definite period measured by time-moments called the Matras i. e.. the Kala-Matras." This stressing is generally accompanied by the strokes of the palms upon one another or of the palms or sticks upon a time-keeping instrument. The first of these three varieties of music lies at the basis
of the Vedic metres." These metres represent the earliest known stage in the development of Sanskrit prosody. The most typical and important forms of Vedic metres are the Gayatri-Anustubh. the Tristubh and the Jagati. A line of the Gayatri-Anustubh stanza usually consists of cight syllables; a Tristubh line ordinarily consists of eleven syllables and a Jagati line of twelve syllables. There are also Vedic metres with lines of five syllables, as well as of ten syllables. The number of syllables in a line is not quite rigidly prescribed. Thus in the midst of lines of eight syllables are found lines of seven or nine syllables, and lines of ten or twelve syllables are found among lines of eleven syllables. These irregularities can be ascribed to various reasons. but we are not concerned with these here. There are also stanzas composed of lines of different length. A stanza may consist of two to six lines, though, more often, stanzas of Anustubh, Tristubh and Jagati have four lines each and a stanza of Gayatri only three lines. "In almost all metres a general iambic rhythm may be noticed, in the sense that the even syllables, viz., the second, the fourth and so on, are more often long than short."
"In all these metres the rhythm of the latter part of the verse (i. e. the line) is much more rigidly defined than that of the carlier part"."
"The first Vedic poets were not far from the period when verse was measured solely by the number of syllables, without any regard to their quantity." "The principle of considering a whole letter, whether short or long, as a unit for metrical scanning underlies Vedic prosody. According to this principle a letter. regardless
of its quantity, forms the basis of the metrical line. and the number of letters in a line alone distinguishes one such Jine from another." The Vedic metres are termed Aksara Vetias in view of the above characteristic.
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