________________
II
(For Nanditādhya's Gathālaksana See Appendix I).
19. Nanditādhya's Gäthälaksana is one of the oldest treatises on Prakrit metres. As its name indicates, it was originally composed for defining a Gātha and the metres derived from it. Naturally short and long letters are defined at the beginning for that purpose and it is stated in v. 4 how the letter ai, au, ah, s, s, and the nasals of the ka, ca and ta Vargas from the Sanskrit alphabet do not exist in Prakrit. But the statement about the nasal of the Tavarga, i.e., about the letter na, is striking. For actually Nanditādhya uses this letter when it occurs at the beginning of a word, and this is quite in keeping with what Hemacandra says in his Sabdānuśāsana VIII. 1.228. Nanditādhya also mentions the characteristic short pronunciation of the vowels e and o, of the nasalized i and hi, as also of the letters which precede a conjunct consonant containing r or h, in Prakrit; but for no obvious reasons he does so rather late in his treatise, i.e., in v. 54 and illustrates the use of all of them in vv. 55-60, at the end of his treatment of the Gathā and before commencing that of the derivatives of it. He divides a Gāthā into 16 Añías, 13 of which are Caturmātras, 2 'are Dvimātras and 1 is Ekamātra (v. 7), but does not enumerate or define any Mātrā Gaņas anywhere. Only incidentally, he mentions the five kinds of a Caturmātra in vv. 12-13, which are to be employed at the different Āmsas of a Gāthā. Yet the specific names which he uses at v. 8 (also v. 78a) are nowhere explained or even suggested. I have not met with these terms anywhere else in treatises on Prakrit or Sanskrit metres. The terms which are employed in the definition of the Madanāvatāra in v. 76 are clearly borrowed from Virahānka's Vșttajātisamuccaya and it appears, v. 77 is actually quoted from his work (VJS. 1.7), in support of them. But there is sufficient evidence to believe that the portion of Nanditādhya's work beginning with v. 74 upto the end is not a part of the original treatise, which was intended to define and illustrate the Gāthā alone, including probably also its derivative metres. For Nanditāļhya is a staunch follower of the Prakrit language and disparages the use of the Apabhramsa forms in composition, in v. 31. On the other hand, the metres which are defined after v. 74 are mainly those that are peculiar to the Apabhramsa language, namely, Paddhatikā, Madanāvatāra, and Dohā with the metres derived from it. Both the definitions and the illustrations, when they are given, are composed in the Apabhramśa language, and this is certainly against the spirit of the above mentioned statement in v. 31. The reference to a ladylove as the addressee in vv. 76-77 (also in vv. 82, 84) is not in keeping with
