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metrical forms, of great originality and vigour, remain quite unexplained as to their genesis.
Beginnings and the Main Types
On the showing of literary and inscriptional records, Apabhramsa enjoyed already in the seventh century A. D. an independent literary status. It was worthy of being mentioned along with Sanskrit and Prakrit. The earliest Apabhramsa work preserved to us, however, does not go much further than the ninth century A.D., though stray citations from a near dozen earlier Apabhramsa poets, including some epic-writers, testify that the literary activity in Apabhramsa during the few preceding centuris too was in full swing. This is also presumed by the well developed form, style and diction of the earliest available specimens. From the theoretical treatment in two pre-tenth century prosodists, Virahanka and Svayambhu, we gather that Apabhramsa had evolved at least two distinct new poetic types, viz., the sandhi-bandha, and the rāsā. bandhā, besides a host of rhymed moraic metres unknown to earlier literatures.
The Sandhi-Kavya
Of these, the sandhi-bandha was the most favourite form of composition. It is found employed for a wide range of narrative themes. The puranic epic, the biography, the religious narrative-single or the whole cycle of them—all could be handled with equal aptness and facility in this form. The earliest extent sandhi-kā vya is not later than ninth century A.D. But this had a respectable long tradition behind. Several earlier poets like Bhadra (or Dantibhadra) and Caturmukha are known from literary allusions to have attempted before Svayambhu to work on the themes of Rāmāyana and Harivamsa and among them Caturmukha, highly respected by all the succeeding centuries of Apabhramsa literary tradition, possibly a non-Jain, was known to be the pioneer in treating those themes in the sandhi-form. Bhoja followed by Hemacandra especially selects the name of Caturmukha's Abdhimathana for citing as an illustration of the Apabhramsa sandhi-bandha.
1 Possibly three, if we are to include Jnanasraya. . At present it cannot be quite ascertained whether some rasa compositions reported
to be in Sanskrit and Prakrit were original or derivative as a type.
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