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REMARKS ON THE TEXTS
devotee's selection also forms part of the caityavandana ritual mentioned in a former chapter, representing the second of the two changeable recitation pieces of the pertinent liturgy.
Our present stuti is true to type with its fourfold eulogy, clearly presented in four exactly parallel Sragdhara stanzas.
One of its formal attractions is the skilful way in which oilomatopocia has been carried through therein, suggesting, in the first stanza, vocal, and in the second and third ones, instrumental music. Obviously, the poet intends this musical performance to illustrate the belief that when the Tirthaikara preaches in the "samavasarana", his voice is not only in itself distinguished by"upanīta-rāgatvam”,' i. e., possession of melody in the technical sense (one of its 35 stereotyped supernatural qualities), but it is also liarmoniously accompanied by celestial music, which devoted gods and genii continuously produce (another of the stereotyped atiSayas of the Tīrthaikaras).?
The use of onomatopoeia in this way, though, is not unique. A famous Sanskrit stuti composed by the celebrated Saint and poet Jinakusala Sūri of the Kharatara Gaccha, who died in V. S. 1389, is conposed according to the very same principle. I refer to the Pārsvanātha-stuti beginning with the words "Dren dreni ki dhapa mapa", which, forming part of the Pāksika Pratikramaņa of the Kharatara Gaccha,
(1) Hemacandra Sūri makes this expression clear by his explanation "Milava-Kaubikyūdi-.rimaråga-yuktată" in the Sropajña-tikā to his "Abhidhảna-Cintāmaņi-Kola", I, st. 66.
(2) Vide Introduction.
(3) Vide A. and Bh. Nalta, ”Dādā Śri Jinakušala Sūri, Calcutta, V. S. 1996, p. 58.
