Page:The Hymns of the Rigveda (English Translation).pdf/12

2 series, with which our investigation can operate, since, as we mentioned and will later explain, the Concept of the Foot in the sense of ancient metrics is not applicable here.

Up to this point, we have only discussed the nature of individual syllables and their arrangement or lack thereof in a series and its parts in terms of the quantitative determination of syllables. However, when we turn our attention from the consideration of long and short syllables to the examination of stressed and unstressed syllables, we take a significant step away from the given information. While tradition provides us with at least a general idea of where long and short syllables appear in the Vedas, it leaves us completely in the dark when it comes to identifying the stressed syllables in Vedic verses. Of course, as long as we are only concerned with the end of those verses, this gap in the tradition can be relatively easily filled. It is unlikely to be doubted that the regular alternation of long and short syllables at the end of a verse is also an alternation of stressed and unstressed metrical elements. The assessment of the beginning of the series or, in the case of eleven-syllable and twelve-syllable series, their middle, is more challenging. Is there a similarly consistent, possibly the same iambic or trochaic rhythm here as at the end, but with the difference that it is more indifferent to the linguistic material here? This means that the stressed and unstressed syllables are more interchangeable than at the end, with every syllable to its place