________________
xxxiv
सवृत्तिकः कविदर्पणः
[INTRODUCTION
blance with corresponding stanzas in the Prākṣta Paingala raises some im
questions, I shall offer my remarks in the next paragraph. But if these latter too are considered as actual quotations, as I believe them to be, Ratnasekhara's authorship must be restricted only to about 25 stanzas, if at all, out of the 46 (from 5-50). On the other hand, vv. 1-4 and 51-74 appear to be composed by Ratnasekhara himself.
22. Ratnasekhara, the author of the. Chandaḥkośa, was a pupil of Vajrasenasūri and the successor of Hematilakasuri of the Nāgapurīya Tapā Gaccha, as we know from the last stanza in the commentary on it, composed by Candrakirtisūri, successor of Rājaratna of the same, i.e., the Nāgapuriya Tapā Gaccha. Candrakīrti was a lineal descendant of Ratnasekhara himself and was separated from him by a little more than two centuries. Two dated works composed by Ratnasekhara are known; they are Śrīpālacarita composed in Sam. 1428 and Gunasthānakramāroha with Vịtti composed in Sam. 1447. The former is in Prakrit while the latter, both text and commentary, are in Sanskrit.21 According to Pattāvalī, quotated in Shri M. D. Desai's Jaina Gurjara Kavio II. p. 759, Ratnasekhara was born in Sam. 1372; thus his literary activities must be ascribed to the second half of the 14th century of the Christian era. Prākşta Paingala, which bears many verses in common with the Chandahkośa, is not an old work even though it bears the name of Pingala. It is again, doubtful, whether in its present form it is the work of a single author, as rightly observed by the editor in his introduction (pp. VII-VIII) to the Bibliotheca Indica edition of Calcutta, 1902. Hamir, the Rajput king of Mewar, whose reign ended in A.D. 1366, is mentioned in about eight illustrations of different metres in this work. This and other indications show that the work originated sometime in the second half of the 14th century A.D. But Ratnasekhara did not certainly know it even though it seems to have been contemporaneous with him. His references to Pingala do not refer to it nor to the Sanskrit Chandassūtra. These references appear to be of a general nature, i.e., to Pingala, as the originator of the Chandasśāstra and not to any particular work. But even in the case of six other stanzas which bear very close resemblance to those in the Prākrta Paingala, it is almost certain that Ratnasekhara did not borrow them from the latter and that both Ratnasekhara and Prakrta Paingala borrowed them from some earlier source. Further, a careful examination of these passages shows that while Ratnasekhara reproduced them without any changes, Prākşta Paingala made some significant changes in them, by introducing the name of Pingala
21. See Velankar, Descriptive Catalogue, Nos. 1592, 1593, 1596 and 1783.
