Thus Hermann Oldenberg (1888) divided the line into three sections by placing one break at the caesura and another break four syllables before the end:[1] E. Vernon Arnold (1905) divided it into 4 + 3 + 4 syllables, whatever the caesura:[3] A more recent author, H. N. Randle (1957), on the other hand, divides it 4 + 4 + 3:[4] The division 4 + 4 + 3 is also favoured by the comparative metrist Paul Kiparsky (2018).
[5] Because the line is catalectic, the final four syllables form a trochaic cadence.
Another study, by Gunkel and Ryan (2011), based on a much larger corpus, confirms the above and shows that the propensity for a syllable to be long in a triṣṭubh is greatest in the 2nd, 4th, 5th 8th and 10th positions of the line, while the 6th and 9th are almost always short.
Trishtubh 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 (developed from the Vedic anushtubh[7]) is interspersed with Trishtubhs.