Vruttajatisamucchaya

Author(s): H D Velankar
Publisher: Rajasthan Prachyavidya Pratishtan

Page 8

PREFACE
The Vrttajātisamuccaya or Kaisitthachanda of Virabanka is the second important text of classical Indian metres that is being published in the Rajasthan Puratana Granthamala. The first one to be included in the series was the Svayambhūcchandas of Svayambhūdeva, which has been published as no. 37.
The wealth and richness of the metres, especially the Prakrit and Apabhramsa ones, treated in Hemacandra's Chandonusāsana, are indeed greatly impressive, but adequate idea of the importance, function and currency of various metres could be had either from their actual use in literature or from the accounts of earlier prosodists. Svayambhūcchandas of Svayambhū supplied an important missing link in the prosodic tradition reaching upto Hemacandra. It showed that the Gāthā (or Skandhaka)-Khañjaka - Galitaka-S'irşaka system of Prakrit metres and the Sandhibandha-and Rāsābandha-based systems of Apabhramsa metres were established since long in the metrical tradition. But through what stages such classification systems gradually evolved and reached perfection can be seen only with the help of still earlier works on prosody. Vrttajātisamuccaya of Virahārka is one of these works.
It primarily describes Prakrit and Sanskrit metres. The few Apabhrams'a metres, it also describes, appear to be rather incidental. They were included in the treatment possibly because description of the structure of the Rāsakas involved defining the Prakrit as well as the Apabhraṁs'a variety. Any way, it is quite clear, as has been pointed out in his introduction by the learned editor, that Virah nka was principally concerned with describing the metres of Prakrit lyrical poems. His elaborate treatment of the Dvipadi's is unique and points to a metrical form which was favourite upto possibly eighth or ninth century, and which later on went out of vogue.
Virahārka's treatment of the Prakrit metres other than the Dyipadis' shows that till his time the clear-cut divisions into sections