verification of chandas.
STADIGAD.US.ORACLE.COM (STADIGAD@us.oracle.com)
16 Nov 95 15:59:59 -0800
I do not want to disappoint any tool development or any ready made tool.
But it my humble opinion, it is a very big task than it appears outward.
There are several issues which complicate the job.
1 Identifying laghu and guru matras.
All know the simple rules that enable us to designate a given letter
in telugu ( or sanskrit ) as laghu or guru. But there are some twists
too.
example.
manDala mEle nokka dwija maatruDu kshatruluu mantrulai ranan.
Here, the the letter `no' becomes guru by ordinary rule.
Butm `kka' does not become guru, though the succeding letter
`dwi' is a dwitwaksharam. This is because `okka dwija' does
not form a samaasa. They remain un associated. When unassociated
as above, the ordinary rule is excepted.
It is difficult to build s/w to consider such tricky cases.
2. Identifying `gana' sequence.
This does not pose problem in most majority of cases.
But occationally it could become difficult too.
In some `chitra kavitwa' compositions, poets some times take
fancy, we may have serious troubles.
example.
A `kanda garbha seesa' is a seesa padyam with kanda padyam(s)
embedded.
3. The concept of yati.
I doubt whether we could build s/w to check yati maitri.
It is a too big topic and often controvertial in some cases.
There are at least 56 yati matri matchings are there. Some
books mention even more situations. Some time more than one
kind of yati maitri is satisfied.
4. Praasa.
If praasa has to be checked, I think it can be done with a
reasonable guaranty.
5. conventions.
It is a common convention, that in vRitta padyas and uddhura malaa's
as well, all 4 lines are natuaral laggus or natural gurus for their
starting letter beforing applying the prasa letter to make it guru
when applicable. [ If first letter of a line 1 is `kaa', then generally
a second line will not start with some `ta' ].
Though kanda padyam is not vRitta, it usually follows the above
convention.
6 Letter inhibitions.
Poets of yester years strongly believed that poetry has not only
easthetic power, but also has certian spiritual power as well.
Each gana is awarded atrributions like color, diety, time, varna,
age, ruchi and may be more things like that.
Also, letters of varnamaala are given all these above kind of
attributes.
Hence, for reasons pertaining to matching ( or mismatching ) of
atrributes, some letters are prohibitted from appearing at some
places in a poem.
For example,
`ta' should not appear at 6th position.
There are several others like this.
Consider
haya madi seeta ...........
( vEmulavADa bhima kavi )
Bhima kavi cursed one fellow who stole his horse, so they say.
Are we going to check a poem for inhibitted letters?
Extra task, but not impossible.
7. Missing/excess parts in a poem.
Some time we may have a poem or two, with missing parts
are excess letters / words in it.
The s/w should be able to tackle the situation and not stop
on first error or fail. If extra words, show them, if there
are missing parts, show where things miss.
This also can be done, but there is a cost, some time a big
sequence must be analysed, even the whole poem. Sometimes a poem
which is 4 lines normlly may be 5 or 6 lines, legitamately.
-Syamala Rao
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