Indological Studies

Author(s): H C Bhayani
Publisher: Parshva Prakashan

Page 33

Dombikā and șidgaka
23
3. This conclusion finds a strong support from the characteristic metre of citations No. 1, 2 and 4. The second line of citation No. 1 is the most intelligible. It can be translated as: 'I narrate to you clandestine intercourse, that is the essence of love'. It scans as under :
चोरिअभिहुणहँ (or 3) वम्महसारु कहेमि तउा
Thus the line has 21 Mātrās. The last five Mātrās have the form- u. There is a caesura after the 12th Mātrā. The 21 Mātrās are divisible in five Gaņas as 6+4+4+4+vvv. These characteristics identify the metre as Rāsaka. Rāsaka is a well-known and quite popular Apabhramśa metre. All the Apabbramśa metrical authorities like Svayambhū, Hemacandra, the Kavidar pana and Ratnasekhara have defined it. It was a Mātrā-metre of the Sarvasamā Catușpadi type-i.e., every stanza having four lines of equal length, the first line rhyming with the second, and the third with the fourth. Every line contained 21 Mātrās divided as 6+4+4+4+ v; the form u- was forbidden for the second and the fourth Gana. There was a caesura after the 14th Mātrā, but later a new variety of the Rāsaka developed with the caesura after the 11th or 12th Mātrā. In one tradition, this new variety was called Rāsāvalaya, while others called it by the same old name Rāsaka or by altogether a new name, Abhāņaka. The variety with the caesura after the 14th Mātrā became obsolete and in the available Apabhramsa literature we find mostly the Rāsaka with the caesura after the 11th or 12th Mātrā. Rāsaka was the typical metre of the Apabhramśa literary genre called Rāsābandha. It was used to build up its main body. See for instance the Samdeśarāsaka of Abdala Rahamāna (13th century A.D.). For some seven hundred years the metre was in much vogue for composing Apabhramśa lyrics and songs of moderate length. Though in the long metrical tradition of Apabhraśma literature several metres of different structures came to be called Rāsaka, the one characterized above was the typical and standard Rāsaka.