Shloka or śloka is a poetic form used in Sanskrit, the classical language of India. In its usual form it consists of four pādas or quarter-verses, of 8 syllables each, or of two half-verses of 16 syllables each. The meter is similar to the Vedicanuṣṭubh meter, but with stricter rules. The śloka is the basis for Indian epic verse, and may be considered the Indian verse formpar excellence, occurring as it does far more frequently than any other meter in classical Sanskrit poetry. The śloka is the verse-form generally used in the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Puranas, Smritis, and scientific treatises of Hinduism such as Sushruta Samhita and Charaka Samhita. The Mahabharata, for example, features many verse meters in its chapters, but 95% of the stanzas are ślokas of the anuṣṭubh type, and most of the rest are tristubhs. One of the Vedic metres is called anushtubha. It has 32 syllables with particular accents. It is the literary ancestor of the shloka which also has 32 syllables but no particular rhyme or accent. A reason for the name shloka is that Maharshi Valmiki who wrote the Ramayana once observed a pair of birds singing to each other in a tree. A hunter came by and shot the male. On seeing the sorrow of the widowed bird, he was reminded of the sorrow Sita felt on being separated from Shri Rama and began composing the Ramayana in shlokas. For this he is called the Adikavi The anuṣṭubh is found in Vedic texts, but its presence is minor, and triṣṭubh and gayatri meters dominate in the Rigveda. A dominating presence of ślokas in a text is a marker that the text is likely post-Vedic. The traditional view is that this form of verse was involuntarily composed by Vālmīki, the author of the Ramayana, in grief on seeing a hunter shoot down one of two birdsin love. In a broader sense, a śloka, according to Monier-Williams, can be "any verse or stanza; a proverb, saying". Difference between shloka and mantra. · A SlOka has to be composed in a specific meter, having a specific number of lines with specific number of words per line, each word could be a manTra. For example, vishNu sahasranAma is in anushtupchanDas. · A manTra, on the other hand, is prefixed by omkAra and suffixed by the essential nAma and the salutary word nama: in between the prefix and the suffix. No meter is prescribed. Lyrics in any Vaarnic or matric meters are shlokas. It is absolutely wrong to call stanzas from Vedic hymns as shloka. This mistake is generally committed by common people.
Metrical pattern
Each 16-syllable hemistich, of two 8-syllable pādas, can take either a pathyā form or one of several vipulā forms. The form of the second foot of the first pāda limits the possible patterns the first foot may assume. The scheme below shows the form of the śloka in the classical period of Sanskrit literature :
The pathyā and vipulā half-verses are arranged in the table above in order of frequency of occurrence. Out of 2579 half-verses taken from Kalidasa, Bharavi, Magha, and Bilhana, each of the four admissible forms of śloka in this order claims the following share: 2289, 116, 89, 85; that is, 89% of the half-verses have the regularpathyā form. Macdonell's chart given above is too restrictive with regard the first four syllables in a vipulā verse. For example, the first quarter verse of the Rāmayaṇa contains a na-vipulā and scans ⏑ – – – ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ –. Other examples are easy to find among classical poets, e.g., Rāmacarita 1.76 manyur dehāvadhir ayaṃ – – – – ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ –. Two rules that always apply are: Noteworthy is the avoidance of an iambic cadence in the first pāda. By comparison, syllables 5–8 of any pāda in the old Vedic anuṣṭubh meter typically had the iambic ending u – u x. In poems of the intermediate period, such as the Bhagavad Gita, a fourth vipulā is found. This occurs 28 times in the Bhagavad Gita, that is, as often as the third vipulā. When this vipulā is used, there is a word-break after the fourth syllable: The various vipulās, in the order above, are known to scholars writing in English as the first, second, third and fourth vipulā, or the paeanic, choriambic, molossic, and trochaic vipulā respectively. In Sanskrit writers, they are referred to as the na-, bha-, ra-, and ma-vipulā. A fifth vipulā, known as the minor Ionic, in which the first pāda ends | u u – x |, is sometimes found in the Mahābhārata, although rarely. Statistical studies examining the frequency of the vipulās and the patterns in the earlier part of the pāda have been carried out to try to establish the preferences of various authors for different metrical patterns. It is believed that this may help to establish relative dates for the poems, and to identify interpolated passages.
Examples
A typical śloka is the following, which opens the Bhagavad Gita: From the period of high classical Sanskrit literature comes this benediction, which opens Bāṇabhaṭṭa's biographical poem Harṣacaritam : When a śloka is recited, performers sometimes leave a pause after each pāda, at other times only after the second pāda.
