Tamil prosody defines several

metres The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

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 A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

) 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

Shaiva Shaivism (, , ) is one of the major Hindu traditions, which worships Shiva as the supreme being. It is the second-largest Hindu sect after Vaishnavism, constituting about 385 million Hindus, found widely across South Asia (predominantly in ...

and

Vaishnava Vaishnavism () ), also called Vishnuism, is one of the major Hindu traditions, that considers Vishnu as the sole supreme being leading all other Hindu deities, that is, '' Mahavishnu''. It is one of the major Hindu denominations along wit ...

Bhakti ''Bhakti'' (; Pali: ''bhatti'') is a term common in Indian religions which means attachment, fondness for, devotion to, trust, homage, worship, piety, faith, or love.See Monier-Williams, ''Sanskrit Dictionary'', 1899. In Indian religions, it ...

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 In linguistics, a prosodic unit is a segment of speech that occurs with specific prosodic properties. These properties can be those of stress, intonation (a single pitch and rhythm contour), or tonal patterns. Prosodic units occur at a hie ...

is the ''asai'' (''acai'') which is composed of ''ezhuttu'' (''eḻuttu''), the letters of the

Tamil language Tamil (, , , also written as ''Tamizhil'' according to linguistic pronunciation) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world,. "Tamil is one of ...

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. ...

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 repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a literary device. A common example is " Pe ...

) 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 tw ...

* 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