Ritual songs and folksongs of the Hindus of Surinam

Prosody and Rhyme

The songs do not as a rule follow any definite system of metrical arrangement³. The singers rely mainly upon the beats of the drum to maintain the rhythm.

The lines in different types of songs are of varying length, for example the sohar has longer lines than the ulārā, but the exact length cannot be determined, the number of morae in one line of the same song not being identical with others.

To maintain the rhythm according to the drumbeat the singers employ various phonetic devices. Short vowels are lengthened;

3 But see V.P. Vatuk ('66, 155-166).

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long vowels are shortened. Two short vowels may share a single mora to keep up with the druta beat. Even the traditionally long phonemes like e, ai, o, au are often pronounced as ĕ, ăi, ŏ, ău. Vowels are elided and sometimes a stop substituted with almost an inaudible remnant of the elided vowel, e.g., jamunā > jam.nā. The interconsonantal or final a may or may not be discounted, e.g., ḍūba maratī = ḍub martī. The short vowels before joint consonants which are treated as guru in ordinary Hindi may here be treated as laghu. An intervocalic h may be inarticulate, the vowels may be assimilated and, if long, shortened, e.g., nahį̄ + hai = nahįya. Other forms of euphony or assimilation may be resorted to, e.g., bhayo + ādhān > bhayavādhān > bhayvādhān.

In some places extra syllables are inserted, without consideration of the meaning, to make the beat identical with another line, for example, na in jin ke pūj na lihini angarej (Song No. 85, line VI).

Here and there, however, some prosodial regularity begins to appear, both in a moraic (mātrika) and syllabic (vārṇika) form of Hindi metre, especially if the above phonetic devices are taken into account. Sometimes only the first quarter (caraṇa) of the stanza may be metrically identical with the third, sometimes the second with the fourth, for example in sohar No. 1 (lines IV, VI): sasura rājā dasaratha ho = devara bābū lachamana ho.

This type of metrical regularity is often found in the songs in which the same phraseology may be repeated from stanza to stanza; (vide, e.g., song No. 8). There are also songs in which a line or a part thereof, perhaps a quarter (caraṇa), may be identical with the refrain (vide, e.g., song No. 6) either moraically or syllabically.

Rhyming is often irregular. Usually an exclamation or a stobha serves as a rhyme. In shorter songs of a lyrical nature such as ulārās, caṭnīs and bhajans as well as in some longer songs a full use of rhyming is made.