Venpa or Venba ('' வெண்பா'' in

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, na ...

) is a form of classical

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...

. Classical Tamil poetry has been classified based upon the rules of metric prosody. Such rules form a

context-free grammar In formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a formal grammar whose production rules are of the form :A\ \to\ \alpha with A a ''single'' nonterminal symbol, and \alpha a string of terminals and/or nonterminals (\alpha can be em ...

. Every venba consists of between two and twelve lines. The venpa meter is used in songs of the types neṭu veṇ pāṭṭu ('long song in venpa meter'), kuṟu veṇ pāṭṭu 'short song in venpa meter', kaikkiḷai "one-sided love," and paripāṭṭu 'song that is quite accommodative' and in satirical compositions (aṅkatac ceyyuḷ).

Popular books written in venba style

# All 1330 couplets from the

Thirukkural The ''Tirukkuṟaḷ'' ( ta, திருக்குறள், lit=sacred verses), or shortly the ''Kural'' ( ta, குறள்), is a classic Tamil language text consisting of 1,330 short couplets, or kurals, of seven words each. The tex ...

, composed by

Thiruvalluvar Thiruvalluvar (Tamil: திருவள்ளுவர்), commonly known as Valluvar, was a celebrated Tamil poet and philosopher. He is best known as the author of the ''Tirukkuṟaḷ'', a collection of couplets on ethics, political and ...

, are examples of venba. Tirukkural comes under a sub-category of venba called Kural venba, wherein each kural or couplet has only two lines. # Nala venba¹ is another classical work written in venba style. # Niti venba² is another venba style book that preaches values. # Acharakkovai³ is another venba style book that preaches values

Basic elements of meter in classical Tamil poetry

Vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

s and consonant-vowel compounds in

Tamil alphabet The Tamil script ( , ) is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. Certain minority languages such as Saurashtra, Ba ...

have been classified into ones with short sounds (''kuril'') and the ones with long sounds (''nedil''). A sequence of one or more of these units optionally followed by a

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

can form a ner asai (the Tamil word ''asai'' roughly corresponds to ''

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...

'') or a nirai asai depending on the duration of

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

. Ner and Nirai are the basic units of meter in Tamil prosody. A siir or cheer is a type of

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 ...

that roughly corresponds to an iamb. Thalai is the

juxtaposition Juxtaposition is an act or instance of placing two elements close together or side by side. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences, etc. Speech Juxtaposition in literary terms is the showin ...

of iambic patterns. Note that the official terms for the different "asai"s are self-descriptive. For example, the word "ner" is itself classified as ner asai. And the word "nirai" is a nirai asai.

Grammar for meter in Venba

A set of well defined metric rules define the grammar for venba. Such rules have been proved to form a

. One set of rules constrains the duration of sound for each word or ''cheer'', while another set of rules defines the rules for the possible sounds at the beginning of a word that follows a given sound at the end of the preceding word. Any venba should conform to both these sets of rules. Following is the set of production rules corresponding to the first set of rules. Following is the set of production rules corresponding to the second set of rules.

Example

Following is a couplet from ''

Tirukkural The ''Tirukkuṟaḷ'' ( ta, திருக்குறள், lit=sacred verses), or shortly the ''Kural'' ( ta, குறள்), is a classic Tamil language text consisting of 1,330 short couplets, or kurals, of seven words each. The tex ...

'':

Notes

References

* * * {{Tamil language

External links

Nala Venba (pdf version)

யாப்புலகம்

வெண்பா விதிகள்

வெண்பாவின் ஈற்றடி

Context Free Grammar for Natural Language Constructs. An implementation for venba Class of Tamil Poetry
(2003, conference paper) Tamil poetics fr:Tirukkuṛaḷ