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सवृत्तिकः कविदर्पणः
composed in the Gāthā, but in a single line of the Aparāntikā metre itself, according to the scheme adopted by the author of the Kavidarpana in Chs. IV and V of his work. This is, perhaps, why Jinaprabha composed his own definitions in the Gathā metre for the sake of uniformity, though at least in one case, this uniformity is set aside in Def. No. 3 (of the Sloka). There are four more metres employed in vv. 15, 17, 25 and 26 of the hymn, which are known to the Kavidarpana; in the ms., they are described as Kusumalatā, Khidyitaka, Kṣiptaka and Aḍilā Dipaka respectively, but the Kavidarpana knows them under the names of Aupacchandasaka (KD. 5.2), Vamsapatrapatita (KD. 4.84), Rathoddhată (KD. 4. 27) and Svägatā (KD. 4.28), which are also the names known to Pingala and his successors. Jinaprabha is silent about this point and even here composes his own definitions of these in the Gathā metre, perhaps for the sake of uniformity, as said above.
iii
3. The definitions given by Jinaprabha are, for this reason, not in any way useful for the edition of the Kavidarpana, even though they first appeared to me to be so owing to the mention of that work by him. At one time, I was also inclined to believe that the recension of the Kavidarpana which Jinaprabha had before him may have been different from the one represented by our manuscript. But, very clearly, the fact that only 4 out of a total of 34 passages are common to the two works does not support the view that they are the versions of one and the same work. I have, therefore, ultimately to depend upon the single palm-leaf manuscript mentioned above for my edition. Fortunately, this manuscript is correctly written for the most part, there being only a few scribal errors or omissions of letters. The first folio is, however, lost and only foll. 2-86 are now available. The colophon at the end of the last chapter is also missing, but it does not seem that any substantial matter from either the text or the commentary is lost. A page is divided into two parts, leaving a space of about a quarter of an inch from top to bottom between them. The part on the left side is somewhat shorter than that on the right side of the page, which has generally 3 or 4 lines according to the breadth of the leaves, a line containing 45 letters on an average, in both the parts together. The Ms. shows the Pṛṣṭhamātrās throughout; it sometimes writes the letter i in the older way, i.e., with two dots and an ukāra added under them. In chapter IV, ya which stands for the yagana, is almost always written as va. Letters dropped through oversight are indicated with appropriate signs somewhere in the margin or between the relevant lines. The colophon at the end of the chapters is brief and does not men
