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AH TATAHT: [INTRODUCTION is followed by the preliminaries such as (1) the definitions of short and long letters and the signs used for representing them; (2) the different forms of a Caturmātra Gana together with the technical names and terms used for them generally and specifically; (3) special directions for the employment of one of them, namely, Narendra or Payodhara, which is later known as the Jagana (ISI), both names being suggestive of its being broad in the middle and narrow at the sides (i.e., long letter in the middle and a short letter on either side); (4) special technical names employed for the three out of the eight forms of a Pañcamātra Gana, each of which has a long letter at the end; (5) terms employed for the Dvimātrika and the Trimātrika Gaņas, for individual short and long letters and for the odd and even Pādas or Añías in a Pāda; (6) and lastly, the common name Purohita or Mantrin used to signify any kind of a Caturmātra or Pañcamātra in general, especially in the definitions of those seven Dvipadis which are called Ganasama, since they must contain the same number of Gaņas in each line, though the number of the Mātrās in each of these Gaņas may optionally be four or five, according to the directions (vv. 13-33).
3. In the second chapter the author first defines what he calls a Dvipadi, as consisting of 4 Vastukas, i.e., metres of four lines, each followed by a Gītikā immediately after it. He immediately proceeds to define the Gītikā which forms the latter part of the strophic Dvipadi mentioned above. This Gītikā is identical with the Gīti of the later prosodists (it is also defined by Virahānka at IV. 13 below) having two lines or rather halves, each containing 2 lines of 12 and 18 Mātrās respectively, but with the addition of 1 Mātrā in each of the two lines of both the halves. This additional Mātrā must be uniformly added either in the 1st and the 5th, or the 2nd and the 4th, or the 3rd and the 7th Caturmātras in each half, which contains, as we know, 7 and a half Caturmātras in it, the first line having 3 and the 2nd having 4 and a half (vv. 2,3). The later prosodists like Hemacandral and the author of the Kavidarpaņa” mention only one of these varieties, namely, the last one, and call it Bhadrikā, but allow two more varieties according as only one Mātrā is added in each half either in the 3rd or in the 7th Caturmātra, the former being called Lalitā and the latter Ripucchandas. As a concession to the old prosodists, however, both of them admit one more variety where a Mātrā may be added at will in any of the Caturmātras or Dvimātras in any of the two halves,
1. See Chandonuśasana IV. 1-3. 2. See Kavidarpaņa II: 11.
