Operation In Search of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Mumbai Circle 1

Author(s): P Piterson
Publisher: Royal Asiatic Society

Page 21

8
OPERATIONS IN SEARCH OF SANSKRIT MSS.
Ratnakara, Rajasekhara, Rissu, Lâṭadindira, bhatta Vallata, Viradeva, Sâhila, bhaṭṭa Syamala, śri Harshadeva, and the author himself. In this list the following names are, so far as I know, new: Kalasaka,† Gandinaka, Chakra, Jiñjira, Muktâkaņa, Rissu, Lâțaḍindîra, Vallata, Viradeva, Syâmala, Sâhila. The verses quoted from these poets will be found in the extracts given at the end of this Report.
The discussion on the 'fitness of metres' which occupies the last chapter, yields some not unimportant items of information for our purpose. The authenticity of the work last noticed, the Chaturvarga, is vouched for by what I take to be a specific reference to that book. Having laid down that the compositions to which the rules of prosody refer are of four kinds, being either scientific (sâstram), or poetic (kavyam), or quasi-poetic (sâstra-kavyam, instruction conveyed in the guise of poetry), or lastly, quási-scientific (kâvya-sastram, in which the author's skill in poetry is of more account than the instruction he professes to be anxious to convey), Kshemendra goes on to say that books like the Chaturvarga are instances of the third kind, while the poems of Bhatti and Bhaumaka are examples of the fourth.§ Pandit Durgâ Prasada, from whom
* यथा विद्याधिपत्यपरनाम्रो रत्नाकरस्य
कंठश्रियं कुवलयस्तबकाभिराम
दामानुकारि विकटच्छवि कालकूटाम् । बिभ्रत्सुखानि दिशतादुपहारपीतधूपोत्थधूमम िलनामिव धूर्जटिर्वः ॥
for
This is the first verse of Ratnakara's Haravijaya. Bühler's 3 34 (Report, p. cxxv.) is probably a misprint. Both here, and in the two works by Ratnakara, to be referred to immediately, his title is given as Vidyadhipati, not Vidyapati.
A Kalasa however is quoted in the Sarngadharapaddhati.-Aufrecht's article in the magazine of the German Oriental Society.
Called also bhatta Vallata.
$ शास्त्रकाव्यं चतुर्वर्गप्रायं सर्वोपदेशकृत् ।
भट्टिभौमक काव्यादि (ms (ध) काव्यशास्त्रं प्रचक्षते ||
Kshemendra's simile in illustration of the first kind of poetical composition, that which is pure science, has a strangely familiar ring :
तत्र केवलशास्त्रेपि केचित्काव्यं प्रयुंजते । तितौषधिरसोद्वेगे गुडलेशमिवोपरि ॥
"Of these four kinds some use poetry in matters of pure science as men