My sincere thanks are due to Petra Kieffer-Pülz, Madhav Deshpande, Robert Hueckstedt and Dominik Wujastyk, who kindly explained that "śloka" in this context means a unit of text length, which consists of 32 syllables.

Thank you all again.

With Best Wishes,

Rohana

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Rohana Seneviratne

DPhil Student in Sanskrit
The Oriental Institute
Faculty of Oriental Studies
University of Oxford
Pusey Lane, Oxford
OX1 2LE
United Kingdom

Email: rohana.seneviratne@orinst.ox.ac.uk
Web: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~pemb3753/

From: INDOLOGY [indology-bounces@list.indology.info] on behalf of Rohana Seneviratne [rohana.seneviratne@orinst.ox.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2015 7:40 PM
To: indology@list.indology.info
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Use of the term "śloka"

Dear All,

Please kindly help me understand the use of the term "śloka" in describing the contents of manuscripts, as in the case; "Extent of the manuscript: 300 ślokas." Clearly it does not denote only the verses in anustubh, because some works contain more or fewer verses than the extent given as such in mss catalogues, and even the contents of some prose works are introduced that way.

Could it be the number of lines or complete sentences they refer to with the term śloka?

Thank you.

With Best Wishes,

Rohana

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Rohana Seneviratne