Gāthā

gāthā (T. tshigs su bcad pa'i sde / tshigs su bcad pa; C. ji; J. ge; K. ke 偈). In Sanskrit and Pāli, “odes,” “verse,” "teachings in verse," "stanzas," etc.

Gāthā is a traditional genre of Buddhist literature, where it is categorized as:

• one of the nine categories of teachings within the Pali tradition, and
• one of the twelve categories of teachings in the Sanskrit tradition.

The Princeton Dictionary states:

Gāthās are often written in quatrains of four lines of eight syllables apiece. The gāthā genre is closely related to geya, “verse narratives” or “verse interspersed with prose”; however, gāthā does not include the geya’s interspersed prose narration and is not necessarily the verse reiteration of a preceding prose narrative.

Sources

• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 

External links

• Gatha (India), Wikipedia