Critical Introduction to Panhavagara

Author(s): Amulyachandra Sen
Publisher: Amulyachandra Sen

Page 16

the subject has been more fully investigated by Schubring1). From Jacobi's treatment of the subject, it would appear that the correct form of a vedha should be as follows It should have an even number of ganas not less than four, and each gana should contain four morae The first gana should be oo oo or o-o and after this all odd ganas should be o-o or 0,0002), the even ganas should be oo oo but the last among them must be oo - All such complete vedhas occurring in passages quoted in course of this discussion have been spaced and the close of a vedha has been indicated by a perpendicular stroke, if it is not already shown by the interpunctuation It will also be observed that the apparent vedhas so marked are not always in their correct form and slight emendations are necessary There are throughout the text many such correct or nearly correct vedhas, but there are instances where emendations will not help and the vedha must remain defective There are, again, innumerable instances, almost on every page, where only the beginning or the end or both of a vedha are met with but the rest is all out of order3) This is a symptomatic feature and is of great significance in ascertaining the relative chronology of our text It will be obvious that the text was composed during a period when the vedha was still the prevailing metre though its hightide was over, but its tradition still lingered There cannot be the least doubt, judging from the large number of correct vedhas as well as a still greater number of partly correct or pseudo-veḍhas met with nearly in every second line of the text, that the author breathed the atmosphere of a vedha epoch, although it was on the decline What is of still greater significance is that the vedhas in our text are not only frequently irregular but also sometimes consist of an abnormal number of
1) Zeitschrift fur Indologie u Iranıstık, 1, p 178 ff and in Worte Ms, p 3ff Leumann loc cit p 4a asserts to have found vedhayas in Pali Jātaka no 556
2) o, o oo means that a word ends at the first of these 4 short syllables 3) Correct as well as pseudo-vedhas occur in large numbers also in passages not quoted, in many instances in such unquoted passages an ins correct vedha may be restored to its correct form by suggesting emenda, tions, but this has been dispensed with, for the nature of vedhas occurring in our text, as well as the kind of emendations necessary to restore them, will be sufficiently clear from the quoted passages