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xxxii
सवृत्तिकः कविदर्पणः
[INTRODUCTION
Vipula and the three kinds of Capala in vv. 21-25 contain the names of the respective metres introduced by the device of Mudra, and appear to have been composed by the author for the occasion. But those in vv. 34-37 do not contain the names of the illustrated metres and may have been bor. rowed by Nanditaḍhya from other sources. V. 36 evidently belongs to some religious epic poem of the Jains and other illustrations which suggest that the author was a Jain are vv. 15, 21-26, 36, 37, 57, 62, 67, 68, 70, and 71. Again vv. 57 and 59-61 appear to belong to some religious poem of the Jains. Thus, in short, Nanditaḍhya's Gathalakṣana was originally intended to contain a discussion of the following topics only: (1) Short and long letters, including those that become so by position (vv. 2-5, 56-62); (2) Gāthā and its composition (vv. 6-16); (3-5) its varieties like the Pathya and others (vv. 17-25); also the four which bear the names of the four castes (vv. 32-39); and the 26 which depend upon the number of short and long letters in them (vv. 40-44); (6) the method of finding out the number of short and long letters in a particular variety of a Gāthā (vv. 45-47); (7) the method of finding out the total number of letters in a given Gāthā and its name among the 26 varieties (vv. 53-55); and (9) lastly, the six metres derived from Gāthā, with their illustrations (vv. 63-75). As regards the date of Nanditaḍhya, we have some indications; thus while illustrating the short o in Prakrit, Nanditaḍhya quotes a stanza from Rajasekhara's Karpuramañjarī (II.49) in v. 56; and Hemacandra in his Chandonusāsana (NSP. ed. p. 27, lines 15-17) seems to quote vv. 40-42 from Nanditaḍhya's Gäthälakṣaṇa. These two indications, together with Nanditaḍhya's dislike for the Apabhramśa language, seem to fix his date somewhere about one thousand A.D.
