Sagardatt and Lalitang Rasaka

Author(s): Shantisuri , Ishwarsuri, Shilchandrasuri, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Kalikal Sarvagya Shri Hemchandracharya Navam Janmashatabdi Smruti Sanskar Shikshannidhi Ahmedabad

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even some Prakrit and Sankrit Räsas. But none has come to light so far. Its vigour can be judged from its later continuations. Having undergone continuous and basic trasformation the Rasaka persisted in some of the New Indo-Aryan literatures down to the end of the nineteenth century (and as Råsas, it is even currently a popular poetic form of composition). There are hundreds of Rāsās in Early Gujarati and Rajasthani, most of the preserved ones being works of the Jaina authors. Bur for Apabhramśa all we have got is (1) a tenth century reference to one Ambådevaya rasa of Devadatta which was probably a Jain religious poem; (2) Atweith century reference to one Manikya-prastārikapratibaddha rasa; (3) A unique thirteenth century poem, Samdesa-rasaka, from the pen of a Muslim author; (4) One small didactic Jain Räsa of the twelfth century, devoid of any literary significance.
The Samdeśa-rāsaka of Abdala Rahamána(SR.) is a charming Data-kavya or Saidesa kavya of 223 stanzas distributed over three Prakramas (sections). But this division rests entirely on the development of the theme. After the prefatory section, we are introduced in the second section to a Virabiņi s chance meeting with a traveller, through whom she sends a message to her husband who had failed to return from abroad on the promised date. In spite of the overworked theme of love-in-separation, the poet has succeeded in imparting to it some genuine freshness, and a very facile handling of diction and metres gets the lion's share of this credit. In using one metre for the general frame and more than twenty pupular metres for variation, the Samdesa-rāsaka suppiles us a typical and the only preserved example of a genuinc Răsábandha. That it is from the pen of a Muslim poet frurther adds to its uniqueness. It gives us some idea of the sensitive delineation of sentiments (especially of love), intense lyricism and richness of metrical types that was characteristic of the Rāsäbandha.
The Upadeśarasáyana-rāsa of Sinadattasõri (1076-1155 A.D.) is a sernion in eighty verses prasing the genuine spiritual guide (guru) and genuine religious practices and denouncing the spurious ones. It is not a real represantative of a Rasaka poem, but a late specimen of a popular literary type pressed in the service of religious preaching. It is straight way composed in one single metre without any structural arrangement of parts that usually characterize the Räsaka form. A number of cita