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and Rudra ganas respectively. In Telugu, the first two ganas of each group are eliminated and the rest adopted and are called the Surya, Indra and Chandra ganas respectively.
Vrittas:—Metres are either Vrittas or Jatis. The former are composed entirely of akshara ganas. They may be divided into two main groups, ordinary and uddharamala. Ordinary vrittas are grouped into twenty six groups called Chhandas beginning with Ukta and ending with Utkriti. There are two vrittas in Ukta, each line of which consists of a single syllabie guru or laghu. A verse of each succeeding group has one syllable to the line more than a verse of the immediately praceding group, so that a verse of the Utkriti group has twenty six syllables to the line. The number of metres in each group is determined by the permutation of the syllables in a verse line in that group. This gives a total of 134217726 metres for the twenty six groups. And this is only the number of the Sama or regular Vrittas—i.e.—metres whose lines are uniform in regard to the number and order of ganas. There are also arthasama or semi regular and vishama or irregular vrittas. A semi regular vritta is that two lines of which belong to one metre and the other two to another metre. Where the two metres appertain to the same group or Chhanda, the Vritta is called Svasthanarthasama
