By far the most important evidence is that of the Vedic poetic metre. Vedic verse works on the same principles as that of Ancient Greek: it is based on alternations of heavy and light syllables. A syllable with a long vowel or a diphthong is always heavy, but a syllable with a short vowel may be either light or heavy. The distinction in the latter case depends on how many consonants come between that short vowel and the next vowel, ignoring word boundaries: if at most one, then it is light; if two or more, then it is heavy. For example, in the gâyatrî metre, the last three syllables but one are regularly light, heavy, light. The first line in RV 1.1.5 is agnír hótâ kavíkratuh. `Agni the wise invoker', so the second syllable of the last word is heavy. The obvious conclusion is that the first of multiple intervocalic consonants is in the coda of the syllable containing the prior vowel, and that a single intervocalic consonant is never in the coda (Hermann 1923:257).
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