is very old, going back several centuries before the beginning of our era.
There are three accents in the Rigveda as well as the other sacred texts. The most important of these is the rising accent, called ud-ātta ("raised"), which corresponds to the Greek acute. Comparative philology shows that in Sanskrit it rests on the same syllable as bore it in the proto-Aryan language. In Greek it is generally on the same syllable as in Sanskrit, except when interfered with by the specifically Greek law restricting the accent to one of the last three syllables. Thus the Greek heptá corresponds to the Vedic saptá, "seven." The low-pitch accent, which precedes the acute, is called the an-udātta ("not raised"). The third is the falling accent, which usually follows the acute, and is called svarita ("sounded").
Of the four different systems of marking the accent in Vedic texts, that of the Rigveda is most commonly employed. Here the acute is not marked at all, while the low-pitch anudātta is indicated by a horizontal stroke below the syllable bearing it, and the svarita by a vertical stroke above. Thus ya̱jnasyà ("of sacrifice") would mean that the second syllable has the acute and the third the svarita (yajnásyà). The reason why the acute is not marked is because it is regarded as the middle tone between the other two. [1]
The hymns of the Rigveda consist of stanzas ranging in number from three to fifty-eight, but usually not
- ↑ The other three systems are: (1) that of the Maitrāyaṇī and Kāṭhaka Saṃhitās (two recensions of the Black Yajurveda), which mark the acute with a vertical stroke above; (2) that of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, which marks the acute with a horizontal stroke below; and (3) that of the Sāma-veda, which indicates the three accents with the numerals 1, 2, 3, to distinguish three degrees of pitch, the acute (1) here being the highest.
