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छन्दोऽनुशासनम् ।
33
there exist two strophic Rāsakas, each being made up of stanzas in many different metres. One of them is made up of Prākrit metres like Vidārī, Dvipadi and Vistāritaka, while the other is made up of Apabhramsa metres like Mātrā, Dohā, Adilā and Dhosā.40 Of these two kinds of the Strophic Rāsakas, Svayambhū mentions only the second at Svayambhuchandas 8.24, saying that a Rāsābandha Kāvya composed of Ghattās, Chaddanikās and Paddhadikās and containing good i. e., resonant words in it, becomes very pleasing to the minds of the people. This would show that after Virahānka's times, Prākrit poetry and metres had received a set-back and receded into the background, with the result that the Dvipadi compositions lost all their 'glamour and importance which they had attained in the days of the Jānāšrayi and the Vrttajātisamuccaya. On the other hand, when the Apabhramba languages had taken their rightful place as the languages of the people, the Rāsaka compositions grew into fullfledged poems called Rāsābandha Kāvyas before the time of Svayambhū. These still appear to have consisted of stray poetry, not dealing with any particular topic in a sustained strain, but serving as a source of great delight when introduced in the assemblies of the appreciative listeners. We may be permitted to infer that these Rāsābandha Kāvyas were similar to the Khanda Kavyas in Sanskrit, like the Meghadūta and the ķtusamhāra, if the Sandeśa-Rāsakal of Abdur Rehaman is supposed to have followed earlier models existing in his days; but at present at least no other poems of that kind are available, and so our presumption about the Rāsābandha Kávyas in the Apabhramsa language must remain only a conjecture. It is, however, certain that by the side of these Rāsābandha Kāvyas there arose, in course of time, another kind of Kāvya, which may be called a Sandhibandha Kāvya, corresponding to the Sargabandha Mahākāvya in Sanskrit, containing a large number of cantos called Sandhis, each Sandhi consisting of several Kadavakas and each Kadavaka containing a few stanzas in metres like the Paddhadikā and others which were amenable to some Tāla. These Sandhjbandha Kāvyas were composed in imitation of, or rather in competition with, the Sanskrit Mahākāvyas and follow almost the same pattern. Their composition needed scholarship, constant 40 See Vșttajātisamuccaya (f. n. 13 ) 4. 37-38. 41 Sandeśarāsaka; published in the Singhi Jain Series, Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, Bombay, 1945.
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