Prose and Poetry Text Comprehension and Explanation
What the exam tests
Passages are drawn from narrative prose and from verse with a moral or devotional theme. Questions ask for sandhi splitting, anvaya, translation, and identification of alaṃkāra or rasa.
Core rules
- Anvaya: rearrange the verse into prose order, supplying the omitted verb and connecting compounds.
- Alaṃkāra: upamā (simile with iva/vat), rūpaka (metaphor), utprekṣā (‘as if’), anuprāsa (alliteration), yamaka (repeated syllables), śleṣa (double meaning), atiśayokti (hyperbole).
- Rasa: śṛṅgāra, vīra, karuṇa, hāsya, raudra, bhayānaka, bībhatsa, adbhuta, śānta.
- Metre: anuṣṭubh has eight syllables per pāda; indravajrā eleven; vasantatilakā fourteen; śārdūlavikrīḍita nineteen. Identify by syllable count and caesura, not by content.
Worked example
Take paropakāraḥ puṇyāya pāpāya parapīḍanam. Split: para-upakāraḥ, puṇyāya, pāpāya, para-pīḍanam. Anvaya: paropakāraḥ puṇyāya (bhavati), parapīḍanam pāpāya (bhavati). Both puṇyāya and pāpāya are caturthī (sampradāna) depending on an understood bhavati. Translation: ‘Helping others leads to merit; harming others leads to sin.’ The contrast is semantic opposition, not an alaṃkāra.
Traps
Do not split a compound as if it were a sandhi problem. Do not confuse upamā with rūpaka: upamā says ‘like’, rūpaka says ‘is’. Do not ignore iti at the end of a quoted sentence. Do not identify metre from the number of words.