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13. VARDHAMĀNA-SŪRI'S APABHRAMSA METERS Introductory
A noteworthy feature of the religious-didactic narrative litera-- ture in Prakrit produced mostly by the Jainas of Gujarat from about the tenth century onwards was the increasing use of Apabhramśa. One or more complete stories, episodes etc., long or short descriptive passages and individual stanzas in Apabhramśa were scattered throughout the work. We have biographies of Tirthankaras, religious narratives, didactic Prakaraṇas giving stories to illustrate principles of religious conduct and 'treasuries of tales' (kathäkośa) characterized by this stylistic pattern. Upadeśamālavịtti of Ratnaprabha (1082 A.D.), Manorama-kahā (1084 A.D.) and Jugāi-jiņimdacariya (1104 A.D.) of Vardhamāna, Sthānaka-vịtti of Devendra (1090 A.D.), ākhyānaka-maņi-kośa-vịtti of Āmradeva (1134 A.D.), Malliņāhacariya of Haribhadra (c. 1160 A.D), Kumārapālapratibodha of Somaprabha (1185 A.D.) may be mentioned out of a host of works of this type.
L. Alsdorf's Der Kumārapālapratibodha (1928) was a pioneering study of the Apabhramśa portions of such a work. It was admirably systematic and through. No other similar study has appeared thereafter.
As a modest effort in that direction, I have attempted in what follows to describe the metres used in the Apabhramśa passages of Vardhamānasūri's Manorama-kahā (= MK.) and Jugāijiņimdacariya (= JC.).
There are about 160 Apabhramśa stanzas in MK. and about 460 such stanzas in JC. There are several irregularies in the numbering of verses in both the texts. In some places the two halves of a four-lined stanza are numbered separately. Elsewhere a single number is given to a passage containing two or more stanzas. The following tables give information in the case of both the texts about (a) the name and type of the metres that are identified, (b) the number of Mātrās per line, (c) the place of occurrence and (d) the total number of stanzas occurring for each metre. For the description of the metres one can refer to the standard manuals like the Svayambhūcchanda, the Chandonuśāsana and modern works on the Apabhramśa prosody.
