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INTRODUCTION
39
work on Kosa or Alamkāra or some stotra would be the seventh. Only some more reliable source of information can dispel the frog of speculation.
Find of another MS. of the Svayambhūcchandhandas
In the section on the Svuyambhūcchandas (Sc.) in the introduction to Part I, I had examined the question of the scope and contents of the lost portion of the Sc. and had come to the conclusion that it did contain a section on the Prakrit metres strictly so called. Happily this conclusion has been now borne out in full by the find of the fragments of a fresh MS. of the Sc. from a Tibetan monastery'. The script of of the Tibetan Ms. is Old Bengali and even though several folios are missing, it gives us a fair idea of the Pk. metres treated in the Sc. The Prakrit section has all its sub-divisions with which we are familiar from the prosodic manuals of Hemacandra and others, yiz., Gāthā, Galitaka, Kbañjaka and Sirşaka sections, besides the well known Varņavrtta. Illustrative citations are given from a host of Prakrit poets, most of them coming to our knowledge for the first time. There are citations from Pravarasena's Setubandha (3,9) and Harşa’s Ratnávali (1, 13-15). Several Gāthās known to us from collections like the Sattasaī and Vajjālagga are ascribed to specific authorse.
Some doubts had been raised, in the introduction to Part I, about the authenticity of certain ascriptions of Sc. Certain
5 The Ms. has been utilized by Prof. H. D, Velankar in his new edition of the Sc. prepared for the Singhi Jain Series.
6 e. g. Sattasai 1, 75 (ua pommaräa-maragaa- etc.) is ascribed to Pälitta ( = Padalipta, the author of the lost Prakrit Kathā Tarangavai ); Sa. 2, 97 = Vajja. 476, paura-juāņo gāmo etc. ), to Bhogika; Vajjā 431 (Suhaa gaan tuha virahe etc.) to Candana; Līlāvai 1294 ( omitted in some Mss. of that work, and Mcited at Chandonuśāsana, I 10. 1), to Varmaputra (Vammautta ). Para nātmaprakāśa 2, 117 ( te-ccia suhaă etc.), to Vidagdha. The last-noted case is interesting also from another point of view. Sc. cites it with the specifically stated purpose of illustrating in Pk. prosody the non-position-making character of consonant clusters with a posterior --Hence the authenticity of the dr clusters of vodrahadraha in the stanza in question are beyond any doubt. This is further supported by Siddhahema 8, 2, 80 and Chandonušāsana 1, 7, 6 ( the Paryāya Tippaņaka on this cites the whole stanza). But the stanza as found cited in the Paramātmaprakāśa has the r-clusters assimilated. This means that either the scribes of the MSS. of the PP. affected that change or that the stanza was known to the author of the PP. in a changed form-in a form later than that known to Svayamohū. The second alternative suggested here would gain support from some other facts (frequency of the pleonastic suffix da, relatively late words -like jamala
near', vari over, clearly derivative character of some stanzas, etc.) regarding the language and the text of the Paramātmaprakāśa.
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