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INTRODUCTION
principal Puranic accounts of the Dwarf incarnation'; and it is difficult to say whether Pravarasena's allusion to the three bracelets is based on poetic fancy or any mythological source. In sculptural representation the image of Trivikrama usually shows two bracelets; but images with three bracelets are known, of which perhaps the most remarkable is the eight-armed figure of Trivikrama in a panel of the Varahamandapam cave-temple at Mahāvalipuram, exhibiting three bracelets on each of the hands excepting the one grasping a sword.2 The image belongs to about the middle of the seventh century A. D., and so is much later than age of Pravarasena. The existence of such images might, however, point to an old tradition about the three bracelets symbolizing probably the three worlds covered by Trivikrama's strides.
the
30
IV
The Setubandha and the Rāmāyaṇa.
(a)
Pravarasena is one of the earliest writers to have composed a kavya exclusively on the subject of Rama in conformity with the Valmiki-Rāmāyaṇa. Apart from the little known Ravanavijaya, there seem to have been certain other poems in Prakrit on the subject, but we know nothing about their structure. The Svayambhucchandas cites a verse each from Nagaha and Kṛṣṇadatta who seem to have written poems dealing with the story of Rama. The verse from Nagaha describes the army of Rāvaṇa, 'dark as the water-filled, towering
1 Harivansa (Bhaviṣyaparva), chap. 70 ff.; Matsyapurana, chap. 245-6; Bhagavata 8.18 ff.; Visnudharmottarapurana, Part I, chap. 21, 55; Vamanapurana, chap.
65 etc.
2 Srinivasan (op. cit.). p. 147, pl. XLIV. Cf. Kramrisch, The Art of India, p. 206, pl. 85. Phaidon Press, 1955. See also Yasoda Devi, Vamana Trivikrama in Journal of Indian History, Vol. 43, p. 833 ff.
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