Indian poetics

A mantra ( ; Pali: mantra) or mantram (Devanagari: मन्त्रम्) is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words (most often in an Indo-Iranian language like Sanskrit or Avestan) believed by practitioners to have religious, magical or spiritual powers. Some mantras have a syntactic structure and a literal meaning, while others do not.

The Samaveda or Sama Veda (, , from सामन्, "song" and वेद, "knowledge"), is the Veda of melodies and chants. It is an ancient Vedic Sanskrit text, and is one of the sacred scriptures in Hinduism. One of the four Vedas, it is a liturgical text which consists of 1,875 verses. All but 75 verses have been taken from the Rigveda. Three recensions of the Samaveda have survived, and variant manuscripts of the Veda have been found in various parts of India.

classical Tamil literature

Shloka or śloka ( '''''', from the root , ) in a broader sense, according to Monier-Williams's dictionary, is "any verse or stanza; a proverb, saying"; but in particular it refers to the 32-syllable verse, derived from the Vedic anuṣṭubh metre, used in the Bhagavad Gita and many other works of classical Sanskrit literature.

In Hinduism, Itihasa-Purana, also called the fifth Veda, refers to the traditional accounts of cosmogeny, myths, royal genealogies of the lunar dynasty and solar dynasty, and legendary past events, as narrated in the Itihasa (Mahabharata and the Ramayana) and the Puranas. They are highly influential in Indian culture, and many classical Indian poets derive the plots of their poetry and drama from the Itihasa. The Epic-Puranic chronology derived from the Itihasa-Purana is an influential frame of reference in traditional Indian thought.

poetry unit

a poetic meter, used in legends in Epic Sanscrit or Prakrit, but not used in the Vedas; often found in Jain and Buddhist texts in prakrit

Musaddas () is a genre of Urdu poetry in which each unit consists of 6 lines-sestain- (misra). Famous early writers employing this form are Mir Anis and Dabeer. Maulana Altaf Husain Hali and Waheed Akhtar are other well-known poets to find expression in this form of poetry. Particularly iconic is Hali's Madd-o-Jazr-e-Islam as an exemplary of this form.

epic poetry of the Indian subcontinent

oral tradition of the Vedas

tradition of poetry

Indian poetic metre

Nazm () is a major part of Urdu and Sindhi poetry that is normally written in rhymed verse and also in modern prose-style poems. is a significant genre of Urdu and Sindhi poetry; the other one is known as ghazal.

Kafi is a classical form of Sufi music in the Punjabi and Sindhi languages that originated from the Punjab and Sindh regions of South Asia. Some well-known Kafi poets are Baba Farid, Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Sachal Sarmast and Khwaja Ghulam Farid. This poetry style has also lent itself to the Kafi genre of singing, popular throughout South Asia, especially Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Over the years, both Kafi poetry and its rendition have experienced rapid growth phases as various poets and vocalists added their own influences to the form, creating a rich and va

meter in Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Urdu poetry

Bṛhatkathā (बृहत्कथा) (Sanskrit, "the Great Narrative") is an ancient Indian epic, said to have been written by Guṇāḍhya (गुणाढ्य) in a poorly-understood language known as Paiśācī. The work no longer exists but several later adaptations — the Kathāsaritsāgara (कथासरित्सागर), Bṛhatkathāmañjarī (बृहत्कथामंजरी) and Bṛhatkathāślokasaṃgraha (बृहत्कथाश्लोकसंग्रह) in Sanskrit, as well as the Peruṅkatai and Vasudevahiṃḍi in vernaculars — make commentary on the piece.

The Kavyadarsha (, ) by Dandin is the earliest surviving systematic treatment of poetics in Sanskrit.

Vedic-era study of poetic metre and verse, one of six Vedangas

Sanskrit language feature

form of rhythmic writing in Kannada

'''''' (, ) is a metre and a metrical unit, found in both Vedic and Classical Sanskrit poetry, but with significant differences.

Sanskrit poetic meter

meter in Sanskrit and Prakrit verses

Chhand (, , ) is a quatrain used in the poetic traditions of North India and Pakistan.

The Siribhoovalaya () is a work of multi-lingual literature written by Kumudendu Muni, a Jain monk. The work is unique in that it employs not letters, but is composed entirely in Kannada numerals. The Saangathya metre of Kannada poetry is employed in the work. It uses numerals 1 through 64 and employs various patterns or bandhas in a frame of 729 (27×27) squares to represent alphabets in nearly 18 scripts and over 700 languages.