YATI AND GAṆA IN APABHRAṂŚA VERSE

Author(s): C. M. MAYRHOFER
Source: Indo-Iranian Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1 (JANUARY 1988), pp. 17-25
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24655118
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 C. M. MAYRHOFER

YATI AND GANA IN APABHRAMSA VERSE

The ganachandas is the prevailing metrical system in Apabhramsa ve

The term gana, which corresponds to the foot of European metrics,
probably derives from gana in the sense of "class", applied to the mn
grouping of combinations of metrical elements into classes, and henc
the members of such classes.1 The best-known class is that which spe
all eight possible combinations of any three syllables, given that a sy
may be either short or long, laghu or guru in the traditional termino
Each member of this class is mnemonically associated with a letter of
alphabet: thus, magana for long-long-long, nagana for short-short-sh
and so on.2 Using these gana one can specify the number and order o
syllables, long and short, in a line of verse more compendiously and
memorably than by specifying each syllable in turn, and that is the p
of the gana. This technique however does not reflect the metrical nat
the verse under consideration; it is not likely to be composed of a su
sion of trisyllabic units.3 By contrast the gana in ganachandas does i
refer to a metrical unit which occurs regularly in a particular place in
verse and which belongs to a class of which the definition is a certain
number of mäträ. The mâtrâ is a metrical element associated with the
concept of the metrical value of a syllable: a syllable is laghu if its vowel is
short, but guru before a double consonant; a long vowel is guru.A A short
syllable has the value of one mäträ, a long syllable, two, and in the domain
of the jäti or mäträchandas,s the principle of substitution by value holds.
Thus if a particular metre prescribes in a particular part of a verse a gana
of four mäträ, the prescription may in principle be satisfied by two long or
four short syllables or two of each — though in practice there may be a
further prescription which limits the choice.
Still, the gana or foot presents conceptual problems, in that it is not a
phenomenon that can be tested linguistically at any level: it has no objective
basis in syntactical, lexical, phonetic, whatever terms. One can point to the
occurrences of feet in a line of verse if one approaches it with a notional
schema of feet, but what would one look for if the schema were not given
in advance? Those who learn in a literary tradition to scan and compose
verses of which the gana or the foot is the constituent element now tend to
mark the beginning of each element in the performance of a verse by an

Indo-Iranian Journal 31 (1988), 17—25.

© 1988 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.

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 18 C. M. MAYRHOFER

intonational feature, a stress on the f

have been the practice of composer
Warder summed up the theory and

The foot or gana can only be an abstraction

rhythm or a "measure" in the verse. Such
the usual convention, and the only really sa
the beginning of a foot, like the beat at th
"ictus" (in the European sense) is very far f
that in the majority of metres the whole sc
purpose whatever.7

There is indeed a formal basis, thou

is the observable phenomenon of a
of mäträ, or morae as they are som
The increment prescribes certain pr
generation of the verse: thus in th
totals can be 2, 3, 4, but never 1, a
member of the series; if the progre
short, for if it were long it would br
consequently one speaks of feet con
and of the line as composed of six s
the first two morae in each foot m
Consequently only two forms of th
short and long-long. Now if one tu
paddhadikä, for example, the serie
the progressive totals are 3, 7, 9 an
excluded. However all five possible
that can make a total or four mäträ
gana?
It seems a priori unlikely that this progressive matra count is the sole
formal basis of the metre. It must correspond to something perceptible in
the performance as a recurring feature. In the Greek example one can
imagine that the performer and the audience were able to distinguish the
recurrence of dactyls and spondees, and that the forbidden combination
long-short-long, if it occurred, would be perceived as an anomaly. But in
the Apabhramsa example no combination of long and short syllables is
excluded if considered in isolation, only when considered in relation to the
progression of the verse. I assume that the perception of this form of
regularity nevertheless did not arise from practising the kind of arithmetic
described above. From what, then? In the following citation Bhayani seems

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 YATI AND GANA IN APABHRAMSA VERSE 19

to appeal both to the durational principle and to something b

feeling for the shape of the verse:

The two implications of the principal of gana-division in general are that fi

mäträ of a preceding gana and the opening mâtrâ of the gana following it
replaced by a heavy syllable i.e. the separate individuality of each of the tw
preserved ... and secondly, the common patterns of the various constituen
viewed in a lot are to be indicative of the general rhythm of the metre if any

It would be interesting to be able to refer such a sense of the

rhythm of a metre to some textual phenomenon. S. I. Pollock'
of yati, break between words in a verse, in particular and the
problems of metrics in general points the way. I should like to
evidence of a particularity of Apabhramsa ganachandas confir
thesis that yati is "a signal feature of verse-design"10 and his
should expect, as Hemacandra did, that an important characte
metrical style would be a poet's manipulation, exploitation or
coincidences of metrical units such as ganas . . . and linguistic
phrases . . ."n The evidence was arrived at in the course of tr
some Apabhramsa texts, in particular the Samdesarâsaka of A
Rahman, in machine-readable form for lexicographical purpo
useful in controlling the accuracy of transcription, and since the
system of the language is fairly phonetic, it is possible to scan te
automatically.12 After scansion, the text was searched for wor
particular metrical shapes, and these were sorted and counted;
the hope of insights into the motivation of the choice of voca
grammatical terminations. What follows is a by-product of th
It became clear to me that a gana can be defined by what in
European classical metrics would be called a "bridge": a place
where word-breaks do not occur, the opposite of the "caesura
occurs where a word-break is to be expected. At several plac
Apabhramsa verse, the probability of a word break approache
are before the last mäträ in each gana. The following schema
Let the vertical " | " serve as a keyboard equivalent of the sym
short syllable used in Indian works on metrics. The symbol fo
syllable shall on the same reasoning be "S".13 The very comm
Apabhramsa metre mentioned above, the paddhadikä, may b
as:

gana I gana L gana 3 gana 4

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 20 C. M. MAYRHOFER

No paddhadikä, in fact, would be ma

four short syllables. But let the sch
a line where a word can begin: name
sign. Now if one expands it by insert
figures representing the number of
the result will resemble the followin
verses in the Samdesaräsaka:

gana 1 gana 2 gana 3 gana 4

93 I Ol I 36 I 00 I 03 I 56 I 32 I 00 I 41 |

The figures were produced automatically,

breaks before the last mäträ in each gana
that seemed to deserve investigation. A part
program permits one to reexamine the corp
both conform to the general type and prese
addition, which can be specified. The text w
verse which produced the one example befo
gana. It turned out to be:

20.4 tiha purau padhiwau na hu vi ëu

I note here in anticipation that nearly all th
involve monosyllabic words which scan as o
words constitute a special class; from the pl
occur it can be deduced, or confirmed, that
va, vi (and its phonetic alternants), si, hu\
na and the monosyllabic forms of the pron
an exceptional word-boundary may occur b
proclitic.
The adilâ is another 16-mäträ metre whic
less frequently than the paddhadikä but fre
tentative analysis along the lines indicated a
difference is in the last two mäträ, which m
to tradition the verse is differently structure
each of four mäträ, Hemacandra prescribes
four, then one of two short syllables.14 It i
count sometimes jumps from 3 to 5 with a
permitted in a regular paddhadikä. On the
paddhadikä with just such a feature exists,
these two verse-forms on this basis seems

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 YATI AND GANA IN APABHRAMSA VERSE 21

paddhadikä may end in 1111 instead of | S | ; Jacobi noted that

the verse into two gatia of six mäträ and one of four would ac
phenomena as well as the traditional schemes.15 However an a
adilä verses reveals a metrical bridge at the points where one
to find it according to Hemacandra's prescription, as the follo
shows:

104 I 00 I 29 I 22 I 47 I 00 I 23 | 52 | 23 | 02 ] 57 | 21 | 34

Of the exceptions, three are trivial, involving vi and hu. Of th

one is the verse

182.2 piyakaha jampiri unamdlyai

of which the last word is unexplained and perhaps corrupt. The other is an
exception which proves the rule:

162.2 kiyau kalayalu sumanöharu surasu

Not only is the bridge in the third gana violated, but also the long syllable
in sumanöharu is divided between the second and the third gana, which
breaks the incremental law. The latter problem would disappear if the verse
were scanned with four gana of four mäträ each; but then the bridges of
the first two gana would be broken. The verse is to be scanned as an adilä,
but an irregular adilä.
The experiment was repeated with other Apabhramsa texts that I had in
suitable format for automatic scansion and analysis, namely the eighth
sandhi of the Kahakosa of Sricandra, the Apabhramsa portion of the
Äkhyänakamanikosa, and the Apabhramsa verses in the Siddhahemasabdä
nusäsana.16 So far as the adilä verses (18 in the Kahakosa) and the
paddhadikä (179 in the Kahakosa, 128 in the Äkhyänakamanikosa), the
results confirm the above and are not worth repeating.
If the existence of these bridges be admitted, one can use them as a test
for particular metres and for metrical correctness. The following experiment
demonstrates the potential of such a test. In order to have a machine select
verses of a particular type, one must specify the features by which the verse
may be identified. In the case of the paddhadikä I specified that the verse
must have two short syllables in particular places, one at the beginning and
one at the end of the last gana in the line. When the Kahakosa was
examined using this criterion, a fairly large number of exceptions to the
bridge appeared: nine in one place, in a corpus of 179 verses. The excep
tions, as usual, proved mostly to have been generated by word-divisions
before enclitics, and they were particularly numerous because of that

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22 C. M. MAYRHOFER

passage in the poem where the clash o

reiteration of bë vi, vinni vi and so o
explained; however, they proved to b
verses 8 to 15 in kadavaka 18 are in f
I S I, a verse-form so like the paddhad
the criteria that I had been using. It i
15 turn up among the exceptions, ver
two verseforms resemble one another
radically different, and it seems to be a
has the power to detect the differenc
The döhä verses of the Samdesaräsak
Kahakosa also were shown to have the
for Siddhahema, since döhä constitute

gana 1 gana 2 gana 3

247 I 001 I 080 I 066 I 100 I 0

gana 4 gana 5 gana 6

245 I 005 I 108 I 051 I 116 I 0

If one eliminates the false excep

after the exceptional word boun

4.21.11 mai vuttaü tuhü dhuru

This remaining verse invites emen

which would produce an accept
The verse-form which is used
as seems appropriate, the räsaka
(in mäträ, respectively) 6: 4: 4:
division into either 2: 4: 4: 1: 3
whether in the verse in question
mäträ.18 The figures produced b
schema, which is not divided in
division before going on:

321 I 000 I 088 I 093 | 058 | 009

006 I 135 I 034 I 142 | 004 | 065

If the bridge is a criterion, the

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 YATI AND GANA IN APABHRAMSA VERSE 23

objective basis: 2: 4: 4: 4: 4: 3. The important exceptions, after

away enclitics, proclitics and a stray verse of another kind, are

74.1 kahavi iya gäha . . .

102.4 anakiyai niyai .. .
121.3 taha paya jampai miyanayani sunihi dhiri khanu

In the first case, it may be that iya is to be added to the list o

can offer no explanation for the other two. With these exceptions
bridge theory confirms Bhayani's division of the räsaka, so far as
second, third, sixth and seventh gana are concerned. The theo
apply to his division of the fourth gana. A division would pro
the following patterns, determined by the caesura (which is he
by a comma): |, | | [ or 11, | |. The application of the theory to
mäträ is clearly impossible, and in the case of a gana of two m
application is necessarily valid and therefore trivial, because a
will involve a short monosyllable, thus: |, |, | | or | |, |, |. Altho
evidence does not allow one confidently to assert that all shor
syllables in Apabhramsa are either enclitic or proclitic, it is at
reasonable hypothesis, and in that case the exception disappear
following test for exceptional verses did not throw any light on t
particular problem, but turned up an interesting metrico-linguisti
association of a particular word with a particular place in the
corpus of räsaka was sorted for verses which show word divis
the eleventh and the twelfth mäträ. Thirteen examples turned
ten involved the short monosyllable na. Presumably in Bhayan
these verses are to be understood as having the caesura after t
mäträ, with a proclitic monosyllable following. The other thre
and su.

Another metre well represented in the Kahakosa is the raddä, a system

of which the first five verses contain respectively 15, 11, 15, 11, 15 mäträ,
the first fifteen- mäträ verse being differently constituted from the others;
the remainder of the system consists of döhä. Bhayani reviews the literature
on the raddä and gives an analysis of the Samdesaräsaka's six examples.19
The same analysis proves to apply to the examples in the eighth sandhi of
the Kahakosa. These number twenty-three in principle, since all of the
twenty-three kadavakas therein begin with a raddä, but textual problems
reduce the usable examples to about nineteen. Where the lines did not scan
regularly, it seemed prudent to leave them out rather than emend them.
Here too the occurrence of bridges confirms the gana-division, and a

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 24 C. M. MAYRHOFER

quantitative analysis of the word-div

interesting in the case of the two ty
as follows:

First verse in the radda:

19 | 0| 5 | 15| 0| 0| 0 | 15| 1 | 0 | 13 | 0| 3| 0| 0|

Third and fifth verses taken together:

37 I 0| 4 I 14 I 0| 0 I 31 I 1| 6 I 2| 14|18| 0| 1| 0|

The first clue to the division into gana is in fact given by the concentration
of word-boundaries at the beginning of each gana. This metre differs from
the others considered above in that the coincidence of gana and word is
rather cultivated than avoided. According to Bhayani, the patterns are
(again, in terms of the number of mäträ in each gana): first verse, 3: 4: 3: 5;
third and fifth verses, 3: 3: 4: 5. The absence of word-boundaries in the
second gana of both patterns is striking. At first sight, there is a fair
number of exceptions to the rule of a metrical bridge before a final short
syllable in a gana. However, four of the five exceptions in the first gana of
the former pattern involve vi or hu; the fifth is at Kahakosa 8. 21. 1, where
the preceding word is the adverb or particle chudu. By contrast, of the four
exceptions in the first gana of the second pattern, only one involves a
clearly enclitic word. If one considers this in conjunction with the propor
tionately smaller number of word-divisions at the beginning of the next
gana (14 out of 37 compared with 15 out of 19 in the former pattern) one
is inclined to suggest 6: 4: 5 as the pattern of the third and fifth verses. It
would be necessary to scan a larger sample of raddä in order to confirm
this, and, no doubt, a sample of raddä from different sources, because it is
possible that different poets handled the metre differently.
In conclusion: the metrical art of the Apabhramsa ganachandas, one may
suppose, lay in the relation between two different types of segmentation of
discourse, one being the word, the other, the gana, an abstract concept in
terms of metrical duration. A relation of identity was avoided, because a
regular recurrence of gana- and word-boundary would sound crass;20 on
the other hand, gana-division with no regard for word-boundaries would
not produce a perceptible rhythm.21 In a compromise, the poets always
observed a rule that yati should not occur in the last place in a gana.

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 YATI AND GANA IN APABHRAMSA VERSE 25

NOTES

1 See C. Cappeller, Die Ganachandas, Leipzig, 1872, especially pp. 9—12, w

different explanation of the name is given. Compare S. H. Kellogg, A Gramm
Language, London, 3rd edition 1938, p. 552.
2 A complete list of these is given in, for example, S. P. Bhattacharyya, Jotti
Metrics, Calcutta, 1963, p. 13.
3 S. I. Pollock, Aspects of Versification in Sanskrit Lyric Poetry, New Haven
106-7.
4 Pânini 1. 4. 10—12.
5 For the terminology see Cappeller, loc. cit.; H. D. Velankar, ed., Chando' nusäsana of
Hemachandrasuri, Bombay, 1961, p. 9.
6 A. K. Warder, Pali Metre, London, 1967, pp. 61—2, quoting from Sinha, The Historical
Development of Medieval Hindi Prosody (thesis, London University): "when one reads or
sings a pajjhatikä . . . one unconsciously keeps time by stressing the first of every four täla
mäträs."
7 Warder, pp. 17—18.
8 For an exposition of the constraints, and statistical tables ifi evidence, see L. Alsdorf, Der
Kumärapälapratibodha: Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des Apabhramsa und der Erzählungs
Literatur der Jainas, Hamburg, 1928, pp. 72—3.
9 H. Bhayani, The Samdesa Räsaka of Abdul Rahaman, ed. Sri Jina Vijaya Muni and Prof.
Harivallabh Bhayani, Bombay, 1945, p. 55
10 Pollock, p. 258.
'1 Pollock, p. 49, referring to the äryä.
12 Compare D. Wujastyk, "Automatic scansion of Sanskrit poetry for authorship criteria",
Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing Bulletin, 6, 1978, pp. 122—140, and see
C. M. Mayrhofer, "Scansion and analysis of Prakrit verses by text-processing programs", to
appear in Revue: informatique et statistique dans les sciences humaines, CIPL, Université de
Liège.
13 On these symbols, see Bhattacharyya, p. 13.
14 Chando' nusäsana 5. 28—30, in edition of H. D. Velankar, p. 182; and compare Bhayani,
pp. 50—53. Note that for the present purpose only the metrical definition of the adilä is
used; the further definition involving yamaka, rhyme, is ignored. Hence the count of adilä
verses in the Samdesarasaka given below is different from that given by Bhayani, ibid.
15 H. Jacobi, Bhavisatta Kaha von Dhanaväla: eine Jaina Legende in Apabhramsa, Munich,
1918, p. 47.
16 Muni Srïcandra's Kahakosu, ed. H. L. Jain, Ahmedabad, 1969; Äcärya Nemicandra's
Äkhyänakamanikosa with Äcärya Amradeva's Commentary, ed. Punyavijaya, Varanasi, 1962;
R. Pischel, Materialien zur Kenntnis des Apabhramsa: ein Nachtrag zur Grammatik der
Prakrit-Sprachen, Berlin, 1902.
17 Compare R. Turner A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages, London,
1966, item 4205.
18 Bhayani, op. cit., p. 55.
19 Bhayani, op. cit., pp. 66—8.
20 Pollock, p. 288.
21 I think this is what Pollock means when he writes (p. 99 and note 132) "a word break is
never said to be anywhere prohibited .... This despite the fact that unrestricted word
breaks will lead not infrequently to an initial misapprehension of the metrical schema."

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