________________
A
INTRODUCTION
their three groups. But the author of the Jānāšrayi discloses by his enunciation of the Pañcamātrika Gaņa his knowledge of and desire to define some Mātrā Vịttas other than the usual ones appearing among the Sanskrit metres. This is actually borne out by the few Jātis which are defined by him in Sütras 45 to 72 of the 5th Chapter of his work. All these Jātis properly belong to the field of Prākrit prosody, but are defined and illustrated there as if they were Sanskrit metres. This would incidentally show that the author of the Jānāśrayi, though & southerner by choice, was never-the-less more associated with the north, since Prākrit poetry of the popular type did not flourish, as a rule, in the south, whose provincial languages were strangers to the Prākrits, these latter being derived from Sanskrit directly.
5. The other work is the Ratnamañjūşā, whose author was surely a Jain. Like the Jānāśrayī, this work too does not adopt Pingala's symbols for the eight Trikas, though the Trikas themselves are employed in its definitions, together with other four Akşara Gaņas of two letters each, but with different symbols. This author has thus a set of 12 Aksara Gaņas, out of which 8 are Trikas and 4 are Dvikas or groups of two letters each. But being more imaginative, economical and resourceful, he mentions only 8 groups of three letters each, without adding any consonants at their end like Pingala and the author of the Jānāšrayi. From these 8 groups he evolves all his 12 Aksara Gaņas, namely, 8 Trikas and 4 Dvikas, together with their representative symbols. For this purpose he has composed his Trikas skilfully, so that the last consonant or the last vowel in each of them stands as a symbol for that group. In the case of the first four Trikas, the first two letters of each form a group, and the consonant, but not the vowel, of the 2nd letter stands as symbol for that group of two letters. This secures for him his four Dvikas with their symbols ; further, the consonant of the first letter of the first two Trikas is used as a symbol for a long and a short letter respectively. Having thus planned and arranged his groups, he also puts the actual letters (consonants and vowels) in these groups, according to a definite plan. Thus he employs m to represent a long and n a short letter, clearly under the influence of the Magaộa and the Nagaņa of Pingala. He employs the semivowels y, r, 1, and v for the four Dvikas and the consonants k, c, t, p, s, $, s, and h for the eight Trikas. The order of the Trikas is fixed according to the Prastāra, where the group containing all
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