Ritthnemichariyam Part 2

SR No.: 001427
Original Sutra Author: Swayambhudev
Author: Ramnish Tomar, Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1993
Total Pages: 220
Language: Prakrit, Apabhransh
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Story
File Size: 9 MB

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The Paumacariya
Svayambhu's Paumacariya (Sk. Padmacarita) alternatively called the Sanskrit and Prakrit literary Ramāyaṇa-puraṇa continued traditions of writing epics on the life-story of Rama, also called Padma in the Jain tradition. The Jain versions of the famous narrative show wide and important variations from the Brahmanical version, represented by the Rāmāyaṇa of Valmiki, which they presuppose and adapt to their needs and tradition. Svayambhu's work has the extent of a Purāṇa. Its five books (kamḍa, Sk. kāṇḍa) called respectively Vijjahara (Sk. Vidyadhara), Ujjhā (Sk. Ayodhya), Sundara, Jujjha (Sk. Yuddha) and Uttara contain a total of ninety cantos, of which the last eight were the work of Svayambhu's son Tribhuvana, as the former for some unknown reason found the epic to be incomplete. To Tribhuvana goes also the credit of completing his father's second work, the Ritthanemicariya.
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Svayambhu was quite honest in acknowledging his debt to his predecessors. For the structure of his spic he thanks the great poet Caturmukha, and for the subject matter and the poetic treatment of the Paumacariya he admits obligations to Ravisena, whose Padmacarita alias Padmapurāņu (677-78 A. D.) in Sanskrit he closely followed. The Paumacariya can aptly be described as a free and compressed Apabhramśa recast-cum-adaptation of the Padmacarita*, and yet there is ample evidence of Svayambhu's originality and poetic powers of a high order.
As a rule he holds to the thread of the narrative as found in Ravisena, which otherwise too, being fixed by tradition even in its minor details, permitted little invention or artistic designing and variation insofar as its subject-matter was concerned. Besides, no poet of the period would ever have conceived of any departure from the sacred tradition. Regarding only the stylistic embellish
*
Ravisena's Padmacarita in its turn, was hardly more than a very close but considerably expanded Sanskrit rendering of Vimalasūri's Poumacariya in Prakrit.