The classical shloka metre can be divided into two types, the regular pathyâ, and the dissonant vipulâ. The distribution of these two types is a characteristic of style, as has already been shown by other scholars, like Jacobi 1970, Smith 1955 and Trautmann 1971. The results of the shloka Pattern Test comprise the complete gana distribution of all shlokas, in order to provide the reader with additional material which perhaps can be used in a further analysis of the classical shloka. They are given in the Appendix. As to the reference authors, although Harsha's Nâgânanda appears to have a Coincidence pattern and percentage similar to his other two plays, the shloka characteristics on the other hand differ considerably. Therefore, unlike with the Coincidence Test, the shloka pattern might be dependent not only on author, but on genre or theme also.
In Chapter 6, another additional test is applied to the thirteen Trivandrum dramas. I counted all the words, reduced to stems, as they occur in the plays, and made distribution tables. The focus is on the five discriminator words as found by Trautmann (1971), on the particles iva and na, on a few other words, and on the words as listed by Schokker (1966:330-351). Words that occur only in a post-classical poet point to a later origin, whereas epic words point to the contrary, unless the content is an epic story, in which case such words are to be expected.