Setubandha

SR No.: 001384
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1976
Total Pages: 812
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_English & Literature
File Size: 14 MB

Page 93

80
INTRODUCTION likewise mentions this view in the Śrågāra prakāša, but he records also a counter--argument that the Galitakas are only one of the many varieties of the Skandhaka metre'. This view fails to grasp the essential difference between the two metres, but nevertheless shows that the interpolation theory was not accepted by all. Hemacandra does not offer any comment on the topic, but so far as the Harivijaya is concerned, he assumes the author of the poem to have composed also the Galitakas, because he criti. cizes him for using them in an irrelevant description of the ocean. We are on surer ground with regard to the Setubandha. None of our commentators except one mention the story of the Galitakas being interpolations?; they explain them with as much care as the Skandhakas. The fact is that the Galitakas have a special relevance to the structure of our poem They not only relieve the monotony of the ubiquitous Skandhaka but enliven the longer descriptions. That is why most of them are found in Cantos 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9. The only Other Galitakas in our poem are employed to heighten the effect of certain impassioned utterances of Sugrīva in liis address to his followers (3.45-48). The Setubandha would lose much of its freshness and variety if we were to exclude the ingeniously constructed Galitakas with their lyric tone and animated imagery. It is difficult to believe that any one other than the poet himself could weave these verses into the text without disturbing the current of thought and ideas. The view that the Galitakas were interpolations seems to have been current in some literary circles in Western India in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. An authoritative writer like
1 See Raghavan, Bhoja's Syngāraprakāśa, p. 802. Madras. 1963. Krsnadāsa merely reports the view mentioned by Hemacandra and Bhoja, and says
स्कन्धककाव्यमिति एकरूपेण वृत्तेन कृतं काव्यं वदन्ति । अतएव गलितका नास्येति वदन्ति.