________________
सवृत्तिकः कविदर्पणः
[INTRODUCTION
cond pair formed by Candrāyana and Candrāyaṇī, the second constituent is a stanza in the Kāminimohana metre defined in v. 10 and otherwise known as Madanāvatāra. As regards the first constituent metre in the two pairs, it is Dohā in the Kundalika and Candrāyaṇa; but it is Gāthā in the KundaJini and Candrāyaṇī, or in other words, the Dohā gives a masculine and the Gāthā, a feminine name to the couplet as a whole, in each case.
26. Ratnasekhara thus defines in his Chandaḥkośa some unusual metres which are not known from other treatises. Evidently, he makes a selection from the then popular metres prevailing among the poets who wrote in the Apabhramśa language, or rather, languages. From this selection we may be permitted to make a few deductions and draw some tentative conclusions. Gāthā, the most ancient Prakrit metre was still holding the field, whether for individual stanzas or for the formation of couplets, which latter have certainly been popular from very early days as seen from Virahānka's Vrttajātisamuccaya. Along with the Gathā, however, two more metres, Ullala and Dohā, have come to the forefront. Ullāla seems to be an indigenous product of the land of the Magadhas, while Dohā was universally adopted by the Apabhramsa poets. Virahānka does not mention the former; but even in the case of the latter, i.e., Dohā, it would seem that at his time that metre was just making a headway, though it had already established itself as a constituent of at least one strophic couplet, i.e., the Raddā, also called Vastu. The Dohā, however, came to have its varieties only later, but certainly before Svayambhū's times. That these two metres, the Gātha and the Dohā, were equally popular at the time of Ratnasekhara can also be seen from the two other metres, Verālaka and Cūdāmaņi, which are a result of the combination of the Pädas of the Gāthă and the Dohā. We have also seen how both were used as strophic metres for the composition of couplets, Gāthā giving the feminine and Dohā the masculine name to the couplet. From the Varņa Vịttas, Ratnasekhara has selected only 14, but almost all of them having a uniform rhythm produced by the repetition of the same Gana throughout a Pāda. This is very significant and gives a sure indication of the new type of rhythm, or music as I have called it elsewhere, in Apabhramsa poetry, namely, the one which is based upon the regularly recurring pause indicated by a stress guided by the time-unit called Mātrā i.e., a KālaMātrā as distinct from the Varņa-Mātrā. The two units are indeed related; Kāla-Mātrā is the smallest part of time taken by the pronunciation of a letter and Varņa-Mātrā is that much quantity of a letter or even that whole letter, which can be pronounced in this Kāla-Mātrā. It is thus that a short
