Anupras Alankar
Quick answer: Anupras alankar is alliteration in Hindi poetry: the repetition of consonant sounds. Learn its four main types, a Tulsidas example, and how to use it well.
Anupras alankar is the Hindi name for alliteration: the repetition of the same consonant sound across nearby words in a line of verse. In Sanskrit and Hindi poetics it belongs to the shabda alankar family, the figures of sound, as opposed to the artha alankar, which work through meaning. The word joins anu, meaning after or following, and pras, a casting of sound, so the term itself points to consonants that follow one another and bind a line together by ear.
Poets from Tulsidas to modern film lyricists lean on it because repeated consonants give a line grip and momentum before a reader has even registered the meaning. Where end-rhyme chimes at the close, anupras threads its music through the middle, which is why chanted and sung traditions, bhajans, dohas and qawwali refrains, reach for it. Used well it feels inevitable; overused it collapses into a tongue-twister.
The poem
बंदउँ गुरु पद पदुम परागा
bandau guru pad padum paraga
Tulsidas, Ramcharitmanas, c. 1574 (public domain)
A Figure of Sound, Not Meaning
Classical poetics splits ornament into two camps. The artha alankar decorate meaning, and simile and metaphor sit among them. The shabda alankar decorate the sound of the words, and anupras is the plainest and most common of these. Its test is simple: read the line aloud. If one consonant keeps returning, close enough that the ear feels it, the line carries anupras. Swap the words for synonyms and the effect disappears, which is the surest sign of a true sound figure rather than an accident.
The Main Kinds
Editors and textbooks usually sort anupras into a few named kinds. You do not need the labels to write well, but they sharpen how you hear a line.
A Line You Can Hear
Tulsidas opens the Ramcharitmanas with a bow to his teacher, and the line leans hard on a single consonant. Pad, meaning feet, padum, the lotus, and paraga, its pollen, strike the same sound three times, so the reverence lands as a beat before it registers as a thought. This is vrittyanupras at its most natural: sound doing the work of feeling, not decoration laid on top.
Making It Earn Its Place
Alliteration is easy to start and hard to stop. A line stacked with one consonant tips quickly from music into gimmick, reading more like a party trick than a poem. Vary the vowels around the repeated sound, let a line or two rest between clusters, and match the consonant to the sense: hard plosives for force, soft nasals and sibilants for tenderness. If you write in Hindi, the monthly Writory contest, open for entries from the 1st to the 25th with a score for every poet on the 30th, is a low-stakes place to test whether your anupras sings or trips.
What poets can take from this
- Read the line aloud and count how often the key consonant returns; if you lose count, trim.
- Reserve heavy vrittyanupras for moments of high emotion or chant, not for every line.
- Change one word to a synonym; if the music dies, you have real anupras and not a coincidence.
- Match the consonant to the mood: plosives like k, t and p for drive, nasals and sibilants for calm.
- Keep the vowels around a repeated consonant varied so the line does not blur into a drone.
Try it yourself
Write a four-line stanza in Hindi, or in careful Hindi transliteration, describing a river at dawn. Choose one consonant and repeat it at least four times across the stanza, then read it aloud and cut any repetition that trips the tongue.
Questions
Is anupras alankar the same as English alliteration?
Very nearly. Both repeat consonant sounds in nearby words for a musical effect. The main difference is that Hindi poetics classifies it formally into named types and counts it among the shabda alankar, the figures of sound.
What is the difference between anupras and yamak?
Anupras repeats a consonant sound across different words. Yamak repeats a whole word or cluster of syllables whose meaning changes each time. So yamak plays on identical sounds with shifting senses, while anupras simply threads one consonant through a line.
Does the repeated consonant have to fall at the start of each word?
No. Unlike the school definition of English alliteration, anupras counts a repeated consonant wherever it sits in the words, at the start, middle or end, as long as the ear registers the return.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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