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Introduction
Milita, Arthāntaranyāsa. Many of his images are bold and original, and reveal his ma stery over the Kavya tradition. Several of his memorable images derive from the ordinary day-to-day life. A fruit with one stone formed in its inside (11), the jumping and falling ball due to bat-strokes (14), sword being sharpened on the whet-stone (22), boiling cauldron (25), peasant driving a herd of buffalows (26), plasterers (27). thatcher (28), barber (30), putting milk-soaked cotton pads on sore eyes (32), lamp-torches taking the round of houses in the Dipavali festival (39), protective amulet (90), stage-actress (94), incense-burner (150) such images serve here to concretize, sharpen or invest with a shock of pleasant surprise the situation or idea under description. The encomiums showered on the poet Bappabhatti by the compiler and the subsequent Jain tradition is evidently based as much on critical appreciation as on worshipful regard.
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It is not quite explicable how a poet of such eminence could be almost completely disregarded by the literary tradition.8 Like Bhartṛhari and Amaruka in Sanskrit. Bappabhatti is uniqne as an early Prakrit poet who has authentically some two centuries of excellent Muktakas to his credit. Inspite of this fact, not even the Vajjalagga has a single citation from Tg. Perhaps the MSS. of the work samehow became scarce at an early date. Under the circumstances, it was quite a pleasant surprise when I chanced to spot a few Gathas of Tg. either adapted or anonymously cited in two works of the 11th century A. D. One of these is a Jain poem in Apabhramsa, the Jambusamicariya of Vira completed in 1019 A. D. Another work is Sṛngaraprakāsa, the encyclopaedic Alankara work of King Bhoja. It is significant that both these works were written in Malwa in the same period.
15
In the beginning of the sixth Kaḍavaka of the first Samdhi of the Jambusamicariya9 are given five Prakrita Gathas and a
8. There is the only exception of Vadijanghala's reference to Tg. as noted above.
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9. ed. by V. P. Jaina, Jñanapitha Murtidevi Jain Ganthamālā, Apabhramsa Series No. 7, 1968.
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