A verse from Vairōcana’s “Rasikaprakāśana” (29)

I was reorganizing my notes for an unpublished anthology of Prakrit verse by one Vairōcana (a Buddhist) and I came across the following gīti verse (no. 29, of 448): दुल्लहसुअणमिलावो उच्चलिउं अहव उच्चलावेउं ।जाण मणे विप्फुरए को ताण समो हु णीरसो भुअणे ॥ २९ ॥ dullaha-suaṇa-milāvō uccaliuṁ ahava uccalāvēuṁ ~jāṇa maṇē vipphuraē kō tāṇa samō…

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On Gāhāsattasaī W191

Verse 191 in the Gāhāsattasaī reads: ciraḍiṁ pi aṇāantō lōā lōēhĩ gōravabbhahiā sōṇāratulē vva ṇirakkharā vi khandhēhĩ ubbhanti People who don’t even know the alphabet [?] are popularly taken to be worthy of honor. They’re like a goldsmith’s scales: even though they are unlettered, they’re carried on one’s shoulders. The comparison in this verse depends…

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Līlāvaī 858

ता 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…

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Metrics and combinatorics: prastāraḥ or “spreading out”

There 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…

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Dhanapāla’s Contradictions (vv. 27–28)

These 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…

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Dhanapāla’s Contradictions (vv. 25–26)

How 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…

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Dhanapāla’s Contradictions (vv. 22–24)

How 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…

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