Tristubh


is a Vedic meter of 44 syllables, or any hymn composed in this meter. It is the most prevalent meter of the Rigveda, accounting for roughly 40% of its verses.
The tristubh pada contains a "break" or caesura, after either four or five syllables, necessarily at a word-boundary and if possible at a syntactic break, followed by either three or two short syllables. The final four syllables form a trochaic cadence. For example RV 2.3.1:
This is to be read metrically as follows, with , marking the caesura and | separating the cadence:
The Avesta has a parallel stanza of 4x11 syllables with a caesura after the fourth syllable.
Tristubh verses are also used in later literature, its archaic associations used to press home a "Vedic" character of the poetry. The Bhagavad Gita, while mostly composed in shloka is interspersed with tristubhs. A particularly long section of tristubhs is chapter 11, verses 15-50.