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$ 19 ] सटीको वृत्तजातिसमुच्चयः
xxiii narrative poems in that language. Dohā is suitable for this latter while the Mātrā is not. It is also worthy of note that Dohā, as its name Dvipathaka clearly suggests, is still regarded as a Dvipadi by Virahānka and not as a Catușpadi as is done, for example, by later prosodists like Hemacandra and the authors of the Kavidarpaņa and Prāksta Paingala. Yet the strophic combination of a Mātrā and a Dohā was sufficiently well known together with its specific name Radda at Virahānka's times. That Dohā was originally conceived as a Dvipadi is obvious when we compare similar strophic metres with a Giti, or a Gāthā or an Ullālaka at their end, all the three being Dvipadis.
(iv) The very commonly used metre Pajjhaţikā of Narrative Apabhramsa poetry from the 9th century onwards is wholly absent from Virahānka's work. On the other hand, the so-called Dvipadi of four lines: has occupied a good deal of Virahānka's attention and space. Two full chapters are devoted to the enumeration and definitions of the different varieties of this metre. Hemacandra's treatment of this particular Dvipadi should be contrasted with that of Virahānka. Hemacandra has clearly said that these different kinds of the four-lined Dvipadi had become obsolete as Dvipadis at his times. Prosodists who came after Hemacandra do not even refer to the many varieties of it, but merely define the single remnant of all these, which has 28 Mātrās in its Pādas.
(v) A reference to stray compositions in dialects like the Abhiri and Māravādi which are but two forms of the literary Apabhraíba and the separate names given to the same metre when composed in a different dialect (like Dhosā given to Gathā when composed in the Māravādi language or Māgadhikā given to Vaitāliya when composed in the Māgadhi language) suggests an earlier stage in the growth of Prākrit and Apa. bhramśa prosody. As a matter of fact the state of Apabhraíśa poetry and prosody is well reflected in Virahānka's treatment of the peculiarly Apabhraṁśa metres namely Mātrā, Dohā, Aạilā and Dhosā in v. 27-36 in Ch. IV, where the Apabhramśa language37 itself is used for the definitions and illustrations, which latter seem to have been composed by the author himself. The name Māgadhikā given to the Vaitālīya when it is composed in the Magadhi language, is also significant and indicates the predominance of the bards of Magadha in the field of bardic poetry at the time of Virahānka, who felt the necessity of mentioning this name
37. The commentator uses the word Apabhraşta for the Apabhramśa language on
IV. 29, while the word Avabbhařsa is employed for the same in a remark of the Text itself at the end of IV. 36.
