shadava

Shadava is a term used in classical Sanskrit and Prakrit prosody to describe a verse line of six syllables. The name derives from the Sanskrit word for six (śaḍa) and a suffix indicating a unit or measure. In traditional chandas (prosody), meters are analyzed by the sequence of long and short syllables, and a shadava line is identified by its total of six syllables, regardless of the exact arrangement of long and short elements.

The six-syllable constraint gives shadava its characteristic brevity, which poets can employ for rapid dialogue, exclamations, or concise expressions within longer poems. Patterns of long and short syllables within a shadava line vary between schools and individual poets, and there is no single fixed pattern universally described for all shadava lines. As a result, shadava lines are often discussed in terms of their syllable count rather than rigid positional patterns.

Shadava appears in Sanskrit and Prakrit verse and can occur alone or as part of mixed-meter stanzas that include longer lines. The term is primarily of interest to scholars and students of prosody, meter classification, and poetic analysis, rather than as a frequently used stand-alone form in contemporary composition.