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6. THE APABHRAMŠA POET CATURMUKHA
I. The few facts we gather about a poet called Caturmukha from Śrgāraprakāśa of Bhoja are as follows! : I. Caturmukha was an Apabhraíša poet. 2. His poetic work, Abdhimathana, was a Sandhibandha i.e. an Apabhramśa kāvya in mātrā meters and having divisions called sandhi. 3. Caturmukha, like Govinda and Candrasekhara, had introduced his name as his special mark (anka) in the concluding verse of each of the divisions or Sandhis of his poems. This name-mark conveyed punningly the name of his favo. urite deity also viz., Caturmukha (i.e. Brahmā). 4. Caturmukha's stanzas are found as citations in Svayambhū's work on Prakrit prosody. From these facts it follows that Caturmukha was a Brahmanical poet and his work Abhimathana had the well-known
urāṇic episode of ocean-churning as its theme. The Abdhimathana has been similarly mentioned by Hemacandra2 and Vāgbhațaas an example of Apabhramsa poem divided in Sandhis.
2. If we refer to the preserved portions of Svayambhū's Svayambhūcchandas4 we in fact find in its Apabhramśa section several illustrative verse passages cited under the name of a poet Caumuha i.e. Caturmukha. Caumuha quoted by Svayambhū and Caturmukba, the author of the Apabhramśa epic Abdhimathana seem to have been one and the same person.
3. Since Bhoja as well as Hemacandra give the Abdhimathana as a typical example of the Apabhramśa epic in the Sandhi form, Caturmukha must have been regarded in their times as a prominent poet. This surmise finds a strong confirmation from what Svayambhū states in the second introductory Kadavaka of his epic Ritthaņemicariu or Harivaṁsa.5 There while acknowledging obligations to his great predecessors in the fields of literature and learning, he expresses his indebtedness to Caturmukha for the “Paddhadiyā studded with Chaddaņi, Duvai and Dhuvaya'. Paddh
