The Hindu oral tradition has succeeded through the ages in maintaining to a very great extent the purity of pronunciation of the Vedic mantrās with their precise phonetic values. In the Indian tradition the sacredness of the Veda arises not merely by its age; It is important because of its power of self revelation. The Veda reveals its true meaning to those who hear it or recite it with full faith and with the preparation of askesis tapas and who aspire to understand its deep meaning.

As mentioned elsewhere, there are three types of mantrās namely rik, yajus and sāma. Every rik mantra is in one of sixteen metres. All the mantrās in Rigveda and Sāmaveda and many mantrās in Yajurveda are riks. Yajus is a rhythmic prose composition we focus here on the riks.

The Sanskrit word for metre is chhandas. Its root is chad, to cover i.e., the rik mantra compresses or covers the wisdom in it by means of the metre. A mantra may have several levels of meaning. The deeper meaning is accessible only to the aspirant who studies the mantra with faith and tapas.

The subject of the metres (chhandas) is complex. The classic book is the Chhandas-Shāstra by Pingala Āchārya dated 1000 BCE or earlier.

Mantrās in Rigveda are in sixteen different metres. As a first step, each metre is distinguished by the number of syllables in it. For our discussion, a syllable is the smallest group of letters which ends in a vowel. A pure consonant without an attached vowel cannot be a syllable. The individual Sanskrit letters ka, ki, ku etc., are all single syllables. Take the phrase vareņyam occurring in the famous gāyatri mantra of RV (3.62.10). It has 3 syllables, va, re, ņya.

The index for Rig Veda Samhita mentions that more than 95 percent of the mantrās of Rig Veda Samhita are in seven metres. We give their names and the associated number of syllables in parenthesis.

The Taittirīya mantra (TS) Samhitā of Krişhņa Yajur Veda mentions all these metres in various brāhmaņa passages in Kāņda 2. Moreover TS (2.5.10) specifically mentions a metre by name virāj with 30 akşharās (syllables). This metre is not found in the Rig Veda Samhitā.

The remaining mantrās of the Rig Veda Samhitā are in ten types of metres listed below.

There are minor variations regarding the number of syllables in each type. Even though the number of syllables in a verse of Gāyatrī metre is 24, the famous Gāyatrī mantra RV (3.62.10) has only 23 letters, the metre being called nichŗt gāyatrī.

Gāyatri metre of 24 syllables is written as having 3 pādās or feet each having 8 akşharās. Anuşhţub verse has 4 feet each having 8 akşharās. A metre like atyaşhtiĥ having 68 is regarded as having 5 feet, with syllables 14,14,14,14,12 respectively.

Error detection

The rişhis have focused on developing methods of chanting which can detect any errors in chanting of a mantra such as omitting a syllable or replacing one syllable by another. For each mantra, there are several different methods of chanting, each method capable of detecting one type of error. For illustration consider one half of the famous gāyatrī mantra of the seer Vishvāmitra, RV (3.62.10). The standard method of recitation involving conjunction is called Samhitā pāţha given below.

Samhitā Pāţha

tatsaviturvareņyam bhargo devasya dhīmahi

Separate all compound words into their constituents and number the words:

tat savituĥ vareņyam bhargaĥ devasya dhīmahi

In the kramapāţha chant, use a text obtained by combining 2 neighbouring words following the rules of sanshi resulting in 6 words.

Krama pāţhaĥ

tatsavituĥ saviturvareņyam vareņyambhargaĥ bhargodevasya devasyadhīmahi dhīmahiti dhimahi

A Krama pāţha expert chants the krama-version of all the verses.

To understand its error detecting capability, divide the chant into syllables so that the syllable ends with an vowel a, i, u etc. Both the third syllable and sixth syllables are same namely vi. Suppose we commit an error and chant the third syllable as va. According to the krama chanting the sixth syllable should be same as the third syllable. He would pronounce it as vi, since we are assuming he will make only one error. Then he notices that an error has taken place since va is different from vi. An error has obviously occurred, but he does not know which is correct va or vi? There are other methods which detect these errors and also indicates the correction.

The various forms of chanting are called as vikratis and there are eight of them. For more information see the section on correcting errors in chants.

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