Prof. Hauben,
I was away from the computer for a couple of days. Hence the delay in my response.
You said:
Re: the statement which you forwarded, apparently with approval. This is purely hypothetical and beyond verification as the oldest text sufficiently attested that uses and reflects on verse-meters, the Rgveda, is also permeated by the knowledge and employment of "song-forms": saamans.
I am not able to identify my statement that I 'forwarded' with 'approval'.
Is it the following statement from Sri Naresh Keerthi? :
>This feature of poetry seems to have eventually percolated into recitative/performative forms that were half-way between poems and songs,
as well as into genres that were entirely song like.
If this is the one, I disagreed with the observation and said:
Both first syllable and second syllable intraline rhymings are features found in proverbs, riddles and other verbal folklore
forms functioning as auditory aesthetic forms serving as memorising tools for the tradition-bearers of these oral traditions.
It is more reasonable to expect a sharing of this feature by the native verse-meters and lyrical forms with the folklore forms or diffusion of
these features from the verbal folklore forms and folk songs into verse-meters rather than from verse-meters into song-forms.
'verse-meters' here are not the Vaidika or loukika Samskrita meters but the Dravidian verse-meters.
Relation between Veda mantra recitation in different styles such as pada, ghana etc. and their singing in saaman style is a different story than the verse-song relation in Dravidian native verbal lore.
recitation and singing styles of vedic hymns have a long tradition of oral preservation.
There is no such preserved memory of ancient verse-recitation/singing style of ancient times in Dravidian verbal lore.
Regards,
Nagaraj
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Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
Hyderabad-500044