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स्वयंभूच्छन्दः
(INTRODUCTION which looks to me most natural29 Any way, it does not fit in with any incident in the Mahābhārata story, and should belong to the Rāmāyaṇa story, if at all.
23. We saw above how Svayambhú does not make use of the Varna Ganas in the construction of his definition of the Varna Vrttas. matter of principle he regards all metres as Mātrā Vșttas and so he employs only the five Mātrā Gaņas, called the Ambas, in the definitions of both the Prākrit and the Apabhramśa metres. He does not recognize any Sanskrit or Varņa Vșttas as such, as for example is done by his successor, the great Hemacandra: Actually, the five Amśas include all the eight Aksara Ganas of Pingala and Svayambhū ordinarily does not permit the violation of the order of short and long letters, thus maintaining their basic music, namely, the Varna Samgīta. According to him the metres are to be grouped under two heads only, according as they are composed in the Prākrit or the Apabhramśa language, though all of them are to be considered as Mātrā Vịttas only. It is, however, remarkable that Svayambhū has often described the inter-relationship among the metres which are generally known as Varna Vșttas and whose basic unit is a Varna or a letter, since their lines must contain a given number of Akşaras or letters according as they belong to any of the 26 classes beginning with Uktă and ending with Utkşti. Thus he often shows how one metre develops out of another by the mere substitution of one or more Ganas of a different type, or by a mere addition of a short or long letter or letters at a particular place in a line, or finally by the coupling together of two shorter inetrical lines. Yet on a closer study of all such cases, one is unable to discover any definite principle on the basis of which he had intended to explain the growth and development of new metres from the old ones. His observation of these inter-relationships has been used by him only for the convenience and brevity of his definitions of metres. In a few cases he seems to have caught a glimpse of the possibility of certain fossilized portions of metrical lines, which formed the nucleus of some new metres growing out of the old ones. But he has more neglected this glimpse than used it for his definitions, and the reason for this seems to be his non-recognition of a Yati in the middle of a line.
24. Thus in the case of Rambha30 (v. 50), Chāyā (v. 51) and Makarandikā (v. 52), Svayambhů explains how after the first block of 12 letters
29. See note on the passage; Bhayani, however, thinks otherwise at P.C., Introduc
tion, p. 17 foot-note. Yet also compare his remarks at Introduction, pp. 79-83
and my note on Sb. 5.2. 30. References to the stanzas within the brackets are to those in chapter 1 of the
Svayambhuchandas proper, i. e. Sb.
