Chandas Pulse · छन्दःस्पन्दः
Hear the metre before you name it
Nothing is written down for the first three stages. You tell two gaits apart, tap the heavy beats, and guess how a line closes — all as sound. The notation and the names wait until your ear has already found the pattern.
{{ openedCount }}
of five stages opened
Pace
{{ paceLabel }}
{{ st.mark }}
{{ st.title }}
{{ st.tag }}
ॐ
{{ stageLabel }}
{{ stageHint }}
Two lines, played as pulse. A long beat is a syllable you hold; a short beat is one you pass over. Listen to both — as many times as you like — then say whether they move the same way.
{{ earCounter }}
{{ el.tag }}
{{ el.deva }}
{{ el.src }}
{{ earVerdict }}
{{ earNote }}
The pulse will play. Tap the pad — or press the space bar — on every long beat and let the short ones pass. This is the whole of scansion, done with a hand instead of a pencil.
{{ c.label }}
{{ tapPadText }}
{{ tapBestNote }}
{{ tapVerdict }}
{{ tapDetail }}
A line, played twice, each time with a different close. Only one of them finishes the line the way it began. Choose by ear.
{{ predCounter }}
{{ o.tag }}
{{ predVerdict }}
{{ predDeva }}
{{ predSrc }}
{{ predNote }}
The ear goes first
{{ lockNote }}
Now the writing down. – is a beat you hold, ⏑ one you pass over — the same two things you have been hearing. The weights below are computed from the line itself, syllable by syllable, not copied from a table.
{{ c.deva }}
{{ c.n }}
{{ meterName }}
{{ meterDeva }}
{{ meterMeta }}
{{ c.t }}
{{ c.glyph }}
{{ meterNote }}
{{ meterSrc }}
The one rule your ear already knew
The last syllable of a pāda counts as long however it is written, because a reciter holds it. Two lines on this page end in a short syllable on paper — यक्षश्चक्रे … के·षु, and पूर्वापरौ … गाह्·य — and nobody says them that way. The weights above apply that rule; without it, those two lines would look like the wrong metre.
A long line is easier to hold in threes. Sanskrit names each three-beat group with one syllable — the eight gaṇas — so a whole seventeen-beat metre fits in seven syllables. Below, each foot is checked against the line's own computed weights.
{{ c.deva }}
{{ c.n }}
{{ meterName }}
{{ meterGanas }}
{{ f.label }}
{{ c.t }}
{{ c.glyph }}
{{ f.check }}
{{ f.gap }}
{{ feetNote }}
Anuṣṭubh keeps no feet
The commonest metre in Sanskrit is not built from gaṇas at all. Only three of its eight beats are fixed — the fifth short, the sixth long — and the seventh decides whether the line is a first line or a second: long to hold the couplet open, short to close it. Everything else is free, which is why a hundred thousand verses of epic fit inside it.
{{ c.t }}
{{ c.glyph }}