Grammatical Riddles from Jain Works

Author(s): Nalini Balbir
Publisher: Z_Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_1_002105.pdf and Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_2

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Grammatical Riddles from Jain works
possible type of mixture. As for the word indramālā, it is probably not by chance that Ajitasena makes use of it. This synonymic designation of upajäti is not attested in all metrical treatises, but precisely in three works which come from South India, as Mahākavi Ajitasena himself, and which, for two of them, have Jain authors$2.
(i) The earliest reference is found in the Ratnamañjūṣā, an anonymous Jain work on Sanskrit metrics which is one of the oldest existing Indian chandaḥsāstras 53:
tristubh (5.24)
indravajra śare (5.25)
upendravajra șare (5.26)
indramälä dvayam (5.27); ct. yadīndravajrāupendravajre sahaikasmin sloke bhavataḥ, bhavati indramālā nāma54.
(ii) The wording of Janāśrayi's Chandoviciti (end of 6th cent. A.D.) recalls the Ratnamañjūṣā, although the technical designations of the ganas used by this author are peculiar to him:
Variety No. 1
Variety No. 2
Variety No. 3
Variety No. 4
Variety No. 5
indravajra bejr (4.34)
upendravajra kejr (4.35)
ubhaya-miśrendramālā (4.36)55.
The author goes a step further, stating that there are fourteen different varieties of indramālā (sā caturdaśa-bhedā, 4.37), as other metricians also do56. But he is one of the rare who provides illustrative stanzas for these varieties, namely twelve of them (the two remaining ones, the akhyānikā and the viparītākhyānikā, which he has already treated separately in 3.7 and 3.8, are not repeated) :
301
Indravajrapada(s)
ab
cd
ad
bc
a
Upendravajrapada(s)
cd
ab
bc
ad
bcd