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Grammatical Riddles from Jain works
299
ko vā diksu prasarati sada kantha-kandāt Purāreh ? (JP 69)
And what is it that always spreads in all directions from the place of Siva's throat ?
where the answer should be nilimā, i.e. the same word read in a reverse order so that it fits with the type of riddle here illustrated, namely the manthānantara-jāti48.
In the question
amantasu anta-gurur ... (sasankam; Dhaneśvara, Surasundaricariya 16.53)
Call the one that ends with a long (syllable),
the point is to test basic knowledge of the technical terminology relating to metrical science. The answer is sa, vocative of the technical term sa referring to a gana of the form vu–, and immediately comes to the mind of those who remember the relevant samjñasutras or kārikās beginning any chandahśāstra49
15. The variety corresponding to the sābdīyajāti of grammar (above S 9) is termed vrttanamajāti. There is no illustration of it in any of the Jain narrative woks considered in our investigation. But it is both defined and illustrated in the second chapter of Mahākavi Ajitasena's Alarkāracintamani. Once more, Ajitasena's definition appears as a clear rewording of Dharmadāsa's Vidagdhamukhamandana. Compare
vrtta-nama bhavet praśna-vrttanāmottarād hi yat (AC 2.52cd)
It would be a yrttanaman, because it has as an answer the name of the metre of the question
and
(yatra) vrttanāmottaraṁ prstam bhavet tad vrttanāmakam (VMM 2.34cd)
(Where) the question has as its answer the name of the metre it would be a vrttanamaka.
However, Ajitasena's awkward formulation includes an element which is not explicitly mentioned by Dharmadāsa : not only does the final answer give the name of a metre, but the riddie-stanza should itself be composed "by the way of mudrā" in this very metre which is to be guessed so. A look at
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