We saw that one way to determine all of the possible combinations of n items taken k at a time is to list them according to a certain procedure, called prastāraḥ or “spreading out.” This procedure assigns a serial number to each of the possible combinations. Now supposing you don’t want to do the entire…
Continue Readingiha paṭhitam udāraṁ vācakair gīyamānaṁiha likhitam ajasraṁ lēkhakaiś cāru kāvyaṁgatavati mitrē mitratāṁ puṣpadantēbharata tava gr̥hē ’smin bhāti vidyāvinōdaḥ Here readers recite properly in song.Here scribes are always writing out beautiful poems.Since you’ve become friends with Puṣpadanta, Bharata,the diversions of learning are taking place at your house. A mālinī verse in Puṣpadanta’s Mahāpurāṇu (Apabhramsha, 965 CE),…
Continue Readingता सुक्कपाअवब्भंतरुग्गओ हुअवहो व्व मह मअणो । चिंतासमीरणुद्दीविओ व्व हिअअम्मि पज्जलिओ ॥ Then, like a fire that has shot up into the branches of a dry tree, desire ignited within my heart, inflamed by the wind of anxious thought. From Kōūhala’s Līlāvaī, when the titular character tells her friend, Vicittalēhā, about the effect that a…
Continue ReadingThere were “six combinatorial methods” (ṣaṭ pratyayāḥ, lit. ‘six notions’) that South Asian thinkers applied to metrical forms (as well as other combinatorial problems), and Hēmacandra’s discussion of them, in the seventh chapter of his Chandōnuśāsanam, was nicely explained by Ludwig Alsdorf (“Die Pratyayas: Ein Beitrag zur indischen Mathematik” in Zeitschrift für Indologie und Iranistik…
Continue ReadingDhanapāla, the Sanskrit and Prakrit poet associated with the Paramara kings, is known to have written a few Apabhramsha works as well. One of them, the Satyapurīya-śrīmahāvīra-utsāhaḥ (in Apabhramsha: Saccaüri-vīra-ucchāhu), is cited somewhat frequently in secondary literature—not because of any great scholarly interest in the image of Vardhamāna that once stood at Sanchore in Rajasthan,…
Continue ReadingThi is a repost, upon request, from my old blog at Harvard, which I have since taken down, since I did not find the ‘OpenScholar’ software easy to use. I have corrected a few mistakes and added some more information. The most common metaphor for a “good” mixture of language in South Asia is “jewel-coral”…
Continue ReadingThese verses, the culmination of Dhanapāla’s contradictory praise, constitute a syntactically-connected pair (a yugalam) that involves a number of references to the Jain scriptures. How is it that this is your teaching, Teacher of the World? It is adorned by the beauty of the glances from an even number of eyes, yet it has the…
Continue ReadingHow is it that your voice is the abode of marine life, though it is not full of the beauty of sea-monsters,not rich in fish, without cranes or ducks, and always without many conches? [How is it that your speech is attended by the thunder of the clouds, filled with streams of nectar, unconsumed by…
Continue ReadingHow it is, Conqueror, that you make available to living beings in this world an auspicious happiness which is both wholesome and not, in which there is both eternal knowledge and no knowledge at all? [How is it, Conqueror, that you make available a cure to living beings in this world who are sick and…
Continue ReadingHow is it that you are devoted to the utterance of sāmans, yet are an enemy of the triple Vedas? [How is it that you are given to making to encouraging statements, and are the single enemy of the three kinds of sexual desire?] How indeed are you known by the title of Brahmā, yet…
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