Shloka

Shloka (meaning “song”, from the root śru, “hear”) is a category of verse line developed from the Vedic Anustubh poetic meter. The traditional view is that this form of verse was involuntarily composed by Valmiki in grief, the author of the Ramayana, on seeing a hunter shoot down one of two birds in love.

The Shloka and Anushtubh meter has been the most popular verse style in classical and post-classical Sanskrit works. It is octosyllabic, next harmonic to the sacred Gayatri meter. This meter presents a very free pattern well suited to narratives. A Shloka has a rhythm, offers flexibility and creative space, but has embedded rules of composition. Like all Sanskrit meters, it is divided into two halves, each half containing in its case 16 syllables, while each half divides into two quarters (Padas) of eight syllables each. The first four syllables of each eight are free, the second four parsed.

The Anushtubh is present in Vedic texts, but its presence is minor, and Trishtubh and Gayatri meters dominate in the Rigveda for example. A dominating presence of Shlokas in a text is a marker that the text is likely post-Vedic.

It is the basis for Indian epic verse, and may be considered the Indian verse form par excellence, occurring, as it does, far more frequently than any other meter in classical Sanskrit poetry. The Mahabharata and Ramayana, for example, are written almost exclusively in Shlokas. The Mahabharata features many verse meters in its chapters, but an overwhelming proportion of the stanzas, 95% are shlokas of the Anustubh type, and most of the rest are Tristubhs.