Ritthnemichariyam Part 2

Author(s): Swayambhudev, Ramnish Tomar, Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 16

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ņava-phagguņe, giri-siharovari phulla-palāsu /
ko daddhu me, ko na daddhu joai va huāsu // • Translation : 'In early Phālguna the blooming Palāśa on the mountain-peak (appeared) as if it were (forest) fire trying to find out whom it succeeded in burning down and who escaped !
Paumacariya 80 11 Ghattā also mentions phaggune phullapalāsu ......... girivare. "The blooming Palasa in Phalguna on the beautiful mountain.' But as the passages contain no clue to any narrative theme, we cannot decide anything about the attribution of Sc. VI 24. And the possibility for such descriptive passages having been taken from some unknown work of Svayambhù himself cannot be ruled out.
(9) The third work with which Caturmukha is to be credited was an epic about the narrative of Krşņa and the Pāndavas. We have several references to this work direct or indirect. Dhavala, who was a Jain poet, states in the second introductory Ghattā of his Harivansa in Apabhraṁsa that he is composing the popular narrative of Hari and the sons of Pāņdu after the manner of Caturmukha and Vyāsa, so that sacred tradition may not be lost.18 The implication here perhaps is that to counteract the popularity of the 'false' version of the Bhārata-story, Dhavala undertook to present the true version in accordance with the sacred Jain tradition, which perhaps faced during his times some danger of being obscured by the rival version.
(10) Another reference to Caturmukha's Bhārata is contained in a laudatory stanza, probably composed by Svayambhũ's son Tribhuvana, that is found in the opening of the Paumacariya in one of its manuscripts. There Caturmukha's go-graha-kathā, like Svayambhū's description of the water-sports, is praised as a performance unexcelled in the whole range of Apabhramśa literature. This go-graha-kathā is obviously the cattle-lifting attempted by Duryodhana and party, when the disguised Pāņdavas Were completing thirteenth year at Virāța. Like the jala-kridavarṇana which figures in the fourteenth Sandhi of Svayambhu's.