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Study of Civak acintamani
is Lacote's contention that in the Brhatkatha, the original intent of the author must have been to name only these chapters relating to Naravahanadatta's conquests of his numerous wives as 'Lambhas', whereas other chapters dealing with the history of Udayana etc.might have been named by him differently. Thus it would appear that the indiscriminate use of the term 'Lambha' denoting a chapter of any prose work (kathā) is an abuse originating at a later period. This can also be seen from the way Dapdin dismisses the distinction between Katha and Akhyayika on the basis of the division into lambhas and ucchväsas as something trivial 1
As for the origin of the word 'Lambhaka' Lacote suggests that the adjectival form of 'Lambhaka' is obtained by the addition of the suffix 'ka' to get 'Lambha' and thus each chapter might have been called as ". . . . . lambhaki nama sargaḥ." By dropping out the portion common to all such titles, i.e. nama sargah, one is simply left with 'Lambhaka',2
Lacote's suggestion appears to be very apt in the case of the Cc. where as we have already seen, the entire story of Civakan, i.e. his education, marriages, attainment of kingdom, coronation and his salvation, has been narrated in the form of a succession of marriages with the bride called Learning, his various queens, with the bride called Kingdom, with the bride called Earth, and with the bride called Salvantion. From this it is clear that Tevar has borne in mind the Sanskrit tradition described above and has named his chapters relating each of these conqustes by Civakan as ilampakams'. Vadibhasimha also follows this pattern in his works by naming his chapters as Sarasvati lambha etc.
The metres used by Tevar in his work mostly come under the class of verses known as 'pavinams' (supplementary metres) in Tamil. To examine any possible element of Sanskrit influence in the selection and use of these verse patterns and the appositeness of Dandin's remark concerning 'metres pleasing to the cars' (ravya-vrttaib) to the metres found in the Cc., a discussion of the metrical patterns commonly used in Sanskrit and Tamil becomes necessary.
In Sanskrit, the class of verses called 'Padya', which are of common occurrence, is defined as one that has four lines. It is divided into two kinds, the vṛtta and the jati. The basic unit which determines the vṛtta is the syllable and in the jati it is the syllabic instant. A jati metre is determined by the number of syllabic instants used in each line of the verse. In the vṛtta metres, the syllables are divided into guru (long) and laghu (short). Each line is scanned into 'ganas' or syllabic groups. There are on the whole ten gapás, viz. ma, ya, ra, sa, ta, ja, bha, na, ga and la. Of these the first eight have three syllables each; one long syllable is designated as 'ga' and one short as 'la'. The different gaņas are distinguished by different combinations of the short and long syllables. The kind of metre is determined by the combinations of
1 Dandin, Kavyadarśa 1:27.
2 Locate, op. cit., p. 222.
3 Supra. pp. 201, 202.
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