________________
2.65
(D) Metres :
It is wellknown that Sanskrit poets of mediaeval India often took recourse to the Campū form in order to avail themselves an opportunity to show their facility in prose as well as metrical composition. We find this tendency fully at work in Jinabhadrasuri, who has utilized as many as four hundred and fifty-three verses143 in thirty mctres. Of these the ones like Anuştubb, Arya, Indravajrā, Upa jāti, Drutavilambita, Puspitāgrā, Prihvi, Mandakrāntā, Mālini, Rathoddhata, Vasantatilakā, Viyogidi, Vamśastha Śārdülavikridita, śikhariņi, Sragdharā, and Hariņi are quite common with the authors of Sanskrit epics, dramas, and mixed romances. But Jinabhadrasuri is not content with them only as is clear from his attempts at a few uncommon metres like Acaladbsti, Aparāntika, Ekarūpa, Kāmadatta, Prabha, Mțgendramukham, and Sarasi, besides the varieties of Āryās like Pathyā Vipulā and Jaghanacapalā. At times he defies all the shackles of accepted and duly classified metrical rhythms and experiments with fresh ones, as for instance, wben he evolves a new variety by adding one more short syllable lagbu) at the end of the accepted pattern of Ekarupa, or when he mixes a quarter of Vibhā metre with three of Nagasvarūpiņi one, while the full verse looks to be an Anuştubh couplet, or when he combines Ekarūpa and Aparāntikā giving us a further variety of Upajati over and above the one in which the quarters of Indravajra and Upendravajrā or Vaṁsastha and Indravaṁsā are mixed, or when he replaces the initial Ya-gana of a śikhariņi quarter by a Sa-gaņa, or lastly when none of the four quarters of his verse fits in any accepted rhythms duly noticed and classified by the authors on Metrics till the end of the thirteenth century.
(E) The Poet's Shortcomings :
Although Jinabhadrasūri is a poet, the preacher in him is too assertive to let him be contented with indirect mode of suggestion of his religious morals. As a result he seems to have completely disregarded the wise consel of rhetoricians like Mammața, Hemacandra, and Vāgbbața in
respect of his Upadesa which should have been presented in the lovingly .. persuasive manner of a wife (kāntā). Often he loses his balance as a
143. The
142. Op. cit., p. 33, vs. 76.
The total number of verses in the printed text has been shown as 447 on p. 168. But there is a mistake of six in numbering of the verses from p. 113, since vs. 268. on that page should be numbered as 274, and so forth. Again, on p. 129 the verse 313, i. e. correctly no. 319, consists of not one but two verses, first two lines comprising the four quarters of Puspitāgrā, and the next two an Arya couplet of the Pathyā variety. Then, again, on p. 156 vss. 387-388 are not two verses as has been shown in the print; in reality all the four lines comprise single verse in the Pythvi metre.
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