Poetry (Padya) from the prescribed textbook
Poetry (Padya) tests whether you can scan and interpret prescribed verses: padaccheda, anvaya, chandas, alaṃkāra, rasa and bhāvārtha.
Core skills
- Padaccheda: split the sandhi joints first; the metre and the grammar both collapse if the split is wrong.
- Anvaya: rewrite the verse in prose order. Verse word order is deliberately scrambled for metre and emphasis.
- Chandas: count syllables per quarter (anuṣṭubh 8, indravajrā 11, upajāti mixed 11, vasantatilakā 14, śārdūlavikrīḍita 19) and mark the gaṇas.
- Alaṃkāra: name the figure and show its components - upameya, upamāna, sādhāraṇadharma, vācaka (iva, yathā).
- Bhāva: state the rasa or the poet's intent in two sentences, quoting one word as evidence.
Worked example
मुखं चन्द्र इव प्रकाशते। Here मुखम् is upameya, चन्द्रः upamāna, प्रकाशः the sādhāraṇadharma, and इव the vācaka - so the alaṃkāra is upamā. If इव were dropped and the face were simply called the moon, the figure would become rūpaka. That single-word test separates the two, and examiners set it deliberately.
Traps
- Naming the alaṃkāra without showing the components - half marks.
- Mis-scanning a quarter because a visarga or anusvāra was counted as a syllable.
- Confusing yamaka (repeated syllable groups) with anuprāsa (repeated consonants).
- Giving a paraphrase with no reference to chandas when chandas is asked.
- Quoting a line from memory with wrong vowel length, which destroys the metre.