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$86-7]
सटीको वृत्तजातिसमुश्चयः from the author's remark at the end of IV.36. The Sanskrit metres which are defined in this chapter are all of them Sama Catuspadis. Virahānka was probably not aware of any genuine Sanskrit Vrttas other than the Sama Catușpadis which were a rightful legacy from the Vedic metres. The Ardha Sama and the Vişama Vșttas in Sanskrit are of a later growth. They are very likely developed out of the Präkrit Mātrā and Tāla Vrttas as said by me elsewhere.21 Virahānka does not use the 8 Aksara Gaņas or Trikas, which have been almost invariably used in defining the Sanskrit metres since the days of Pingala. On the other hand, he employs ihe terms and names which he has given at the beginning of his work. This is probably because he has followed his own method of spreading his definition over a whole stanza of the particular metre instead of restricting it to a single line as was done by Jayadeva and his successors or putting down the definition in a Sútra as is done by Pingala and Hemacandra. This latter device secures brevity of expression for which Virahānka did not evidently care. At the beginning of his treatise in v. 3 he has promised to give the definitions and illustrations in one and the same stanza and so his method gives not only the definition and the structure of a metre, but also its full extent. The division of metres into 26 heads which is as old as the Prātiśākhyas, is not actually mentioned by Virahāńka, though he has virtually followed it as is clear from his arrangement of his definitions and his references to Uktā (VI.3), Brhati (VI.18) and Utkști (VI.19, 44) as well as vv. 4, 5 of ch. 6 which formed a part of our text according to the commentator. I also draw attention to the name Miśrā or Saika-tripādā given to what is afterwards known as Upajāti. The former is a significant name, while the latter similarly suggests that originally the mixture consisted of the two metres namely Indravajrā and Upendravajra in the proportion of 3 to 1 generally. Actually the illustration contains lines 1, 3 and 4 in the Indravajrā and line 2 in the Upendravajrā metre. It is also to be noted that Virahānka starts his treatment with the definition of a metre having a single long letter in each of its four lines, while Pingala starts it, as we know, with metres whose lines contain 6 letters each.23 Another curious thing about Virahanka's treatment of Sanskrit metres is that it does not contain any references to the Yati, namely, the Caesura within the body of a line 23 It is quite likely that our author did not accept the theory of Yati in the middle of a Pāda or a line. In his opinion, it seems, the Yati is more or less a matter of convenience even in Sanskrit
21. See Jayadaman, Introduction, para 17 (p. 24). 22. See Jayadāman, Introduction, para 9 (p. 18). 23. Virahānka mentions the Yati only in the case of the Adhikakşarā at IV. 24.
