Prior to the study of the Vedas, the ancient student had to undergo the study of phonetics and pronunciation and this is being explained here as three phrases….
The vowels, svars alone carry the ‘meter’ and they are of three types – short vowels, hrasva ; long vowels, dīrgha and prolongated vowels, pluta. This creates an exhaustive list of 23 vowels as follows :-
â, î, û, r, l, e, ô (A¸ [ ¸ ] ¸ ? ¸ ; ¸ e ¸ Aao) are short.