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commentaries thereon; his dialect is influenced by the Prakrit prose of the dramas; he shows a small number of words which are further deductions from the known forms; and, as he conceives the expressions first in Sanskrit, we find that many Sanskrit forms are directly corrupted into Prakrit, that some initial consonants are elided and that some initial duplicates are retained. 13 These observations practically hold good in the case of Usāṇiruddham, and corresponding illustrations can be easily gathered from the text. The text presented here is only a tentative one, and the grammatical details can be better studied after some more Mss. are collated. As in the case of Kamsavaho this text too is not only accompanied by the Sanskrit Chāyā, but the Chāyā is written first and then follow the Prakrit verses. It is not unlikely if this Chāyā also belongs to the author himself. Authors like Rāma Pāṇivāda were themselves play-wrights and therefore required the study of Präkrits. Being gifted poets their poetic genius expressed itself in Prakrit too. So we have these two poems composed in the extreme South and in the last period of the Prakrit literature. If more careful search is instituted, many such poems might be discovered in the South; and I appeal to the South Indian scholars to keep their eye on them and bring them to light to make the picture of Prakrit literature as complete as possible.
7. METRES IN THE POEM
The following metres are used in Usāṇiruddham and they are arranged here according to English alphabets : Anustubh (72) iv. 1-72; Drutavilambita (1) iii. 62; Hariņi (1) iv. 81; Mālinī (1) iv. 78; Mañjubhāṣiņī (1) iii.63; Pṛthvi (1) iv. 80; Puspitāgrā (61) i. 77, iii. 1-60; Śārdulavikrīḍita (2) iv.
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