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The negative particles in the anuṣṭubh feet of the Buddhavamsa -a study on their applications
Devaprasad Guha
The Buddhavamsa, a canonical Pali text, is a unique poetical composition. According to the Nalanda edition of the book, which incidentally has been used for the present study, the work contains 1,267 verses, of which 1,210 are four-footed and 57 six-footed. Thus, the text has altogether 5, 182 feet, of which only 74 have in them the use of the negative particles, and these happen to be na and mā. The former is found in 68 feet (45 odd and 23 even), and the latter in 6 feet equally distributed between odd and even ones. The particles appear only once in every foot except in na so sakka na hetuye (2.9b) where na occurs twice. For the present discussion, the earlier na has been reckoned as a simple indeclinable and the latter as the negative particle.
The particles appear mostly in anuştubh feet, and only occasionally in bṛhati ones. In pankti and triṣṭubh feet, they occur but rarely. The table below speaks of their footwise frequency.
feet
anustubh
brhati
pankti
tristubh
Jain Education International
Table 1
frequency
na so sakka na hetuye
na sakka tam gaṇetuye
na
53
11
2
2
「
total
68 percentage 91.9
mā
5
1
6
8.1
total
58
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12
2
2
74
percentage
The following anustubh feet are found repeated several times. Details about their frequency are given below.
78.4
16.2
2.7
2.7
100.0
5 286 28d
2.120a 125a 130a 135a 140a 145a 150a 155a 160a
संकाय पत्रिका - १
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