A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s3.18

c9.s3.18

Noteworthy also is the fact that in the scanty number of verses there occur specimens of such ornate metres as the Mālatī, the Praharṣiṇī, the Pramitākṣarā, and the Vasantatilaka, beside the normal Çloka and Triṣṭubh. These new metres lead us into a different sphere from the Vedic metres, and striking light on this development is afforded by the metre of the Kārikās,¹ mostly, if not all, written probably by predecessors of Patañjali, which deal with disputed points of grammar. Among these are besides the Çloka and Vaktra, Indravajrā, Upajāti, Çālinī, Vaṅçasthā, all later usual, and the much less common metres, Samānī, consisting of four verses each of four trochees, Vidyunmālā, similarly made up of spondees, the anapaestic Toṭaka, and the Dodhaka, in which the verse has three dactyls and a spondee. This richness and elaboration of metre, in striking contrast to the comparative freedom of Vedic and epic literature, must certainly have arisen from poetical use; it cannot have been invented for grammatical memorial verses, for which a simple metre might better suffice. The names Toṭaka and Dodhaka have been suspected of Prācritic origin, and the latter of ultimate Greek origin, but these are unproved hypotheses without literary or other support.