Tamilprosody defines severalmetres in six basic elements[1] covering the various aspects of rhythm. Most classical works and many modern works are written in these metres.
Tolkappiyam represents the older tradition in Tamil prosody whileyapparungalam andyapparungalakkarigai represent the later tradition. The prosodic structure of literary works from the Sangam era has to be analysed according to the Tolkappiyam. The rules given in Yapparungalakkarigai are used in the scansion of later works.
The development of Tamil prosody can be broadly broken into four stages. The first stage is predominantly indigenous, pre-Sanskritic and extra-Sanskritic. It is based on a basic metrical unit namedacai which forms the basis for all the important classical metres of Tamil. The second stage (c. 600 CE) marks the influence of Sanskritic prosody on the Tamil metre and ends with the overwhelming incorporation of theakshara (syllable) andmatra (mora) based metrics alongside the indigenous Tamil ones.[2]
The third stage is marked by the gradual coming together of poetry and music starting with the use of fixed melody types (paṇ) inShaiva andVaishnavaBhakti texts. The stage culminates with the spread of musical forms in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th-century. The final stage appears with the introduction of free verse and prose-poetry in the early 20th century.[2]
The basicprosodic unit is theasai (acai) which is composed ofezhuttu (eḻuttu), the letters of theTamil language or more accurately, the speech sounds in Tamil. Asais are the components of themetrical foot orcīr which, in turn, are the components of theadi (aṭi), a line of poetry. Other elements includetodai (toṭai,alliteration) andvannam (vaṇṇam, "rhythmic effect", lit. colour or beauty).[3]
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