Chaupai

(“four-footed”) Poetic form in northern
Indian poetry. As its name suggests, the
chaupai is made up of four lines. The
rhyme scheme is aabb, which has led
some to consider it a compound of two
two-line segments. Based on the distinction between “heavy” and “light”
syllables, each line contains sixteen
metric beats arranged in a pattern of
6 + 4 + 4 + 2. A heavy syllable contains a
long vowel or a consonant cluster and is
counted as two metric beats; all other
syllables are light and count as one beat.
The chaupai is one of the most important meters in medieval Hindi literature,
particularly for longer narrative works,
and it is a significant meter in bhakti
(devotional) poetry. Its most famous
use appears in the Ramcharitmanas,
the Ramayana retold by the poetsaint Tulsidas.