394 DIFFERENT KINDS OF POETRY
The word padam corresponds likewise to our strophe, stanza, or couplet.
Padyam includes the great poems composed in honour of
< ^ods and heroes. They are divided into stanzas. There are at least thirty different forms of these stanzas, which may be introduced and interspersed in the course of the same poem. The padyams are also used in compositions dealing with moral and satirical subjects. The Telugu poet
Vemana and the Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar excelled in these two kinds of composition, of which I shall speak again at the end of the present chapter.
The species of poetry called dwipada( two feet) is not subject to very strict rules. It might be described as free improvisation, and is used in the recital of short stories and adventures.
It is unnecessary to enter into details about the other
kinds of poetry; it is easy to conjecture what they are like from what has been already said.
Long and Short Quantities.
Hindu verses, like those in Greek and Latin, are formed of feet, composed of letters long or short in quantity.
From these long and short feet are formed hemistichs, or lines which, combined in their turn, form stanzas.
I have remarked that the feet are composed of letters, because in the Indian languages there are no such things as syllables. Every consonant carries its own vowel, which is incorporated with it. In several languages of India combinations such as bra, pla, & c, which we call syllables, are also written as one single letter.
The short letters are called laghu-aksharam, and the long ones guru-aksharam, in allusion, no doubt, to the slow and solemn gait of a Hindu guru. Even in ordinary writing they seldom fail to make a distinction between the long and short letters with their particular marks. This is scrupulously observed in pronunciation; and in verse it is quite indispensable.
In Hindu, as well as in Greek and Latin poetry, a long
letter is equivalent to two short, and two long to four short.
Thus the word mcitd, composed of two long letters, is equivalent to the word iruvadu, composed of four short ones.