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The relationship between metrical, syntactic, and rhetorical structure in the Rigveda: the gāyatrī stanza

Abstract It is often said, independently of any linguistic evidence, that the refusal of the redactors of the Rigveda text to allow sandhi between the second and third eight-syllable verses (pādas) of the three-line Rigvedic gāyatrī stanza is based on their parallel convention in the cases of the four-line triṣṭubh and anuṣṭubh stanzas, where the first two lines predominantly serve as an independent discourse unit (distich) relative to the last two. This paper attempts to provide independent linguistic evidence for the redactors’ treatment of the gāyatrī line by examining the syntactic and rhetorical structures of the first 300 gāyatrī stanzas in the Rigveda. The results show that nearly 60% of these show a clear syntactic and/or rhetorical break at the end of the second verse, whereas fewer than 19% show such a boundary following the first verse. While this does not prove that the redactors’ procedure was based on syntactic-rhetorical structure alone, it is maintained that the redactors could not have been unaware of the preponderance of a linguistic break following the second verse of the gāyatrī and that, even if they were influenced by their treatment of the distich boundary in four-line stanzas, their procedure was not simply a matter of analogical extension independent of linguistic considerations.