Thanks for your comments and observation in this and the previous
messages. Here's my response:
You wrote:
<< As you say the metre of this verse is Indravajra. It is a metre
more commonly used in ornate (kaavya) literary works, like the
Hatthavanagallavihaarava.msa which figured in one of the recent
discussions in this group. In less sophisticated works like the
Jataka, the metrical rules are not observed strictly. Especially they
don't care about long/short in the last syllable of a line (paada).
The reason is that in any case the last syllable gets lengthened
automatically in recitation. Often in these works we see that two
short syllable are found where metre calls for a long syllable. I
think this too is due to the possibility to recite two shorts as one
long.>>
I would say the metre of the verse is upajaati which is a mixture of
the indavajiraa (1st, 2nd, and 3rd paadas) and upendavajiraa (4th
paada) metres. I believe the metre of the Hatthavanagallavihaarava.msa
verse that came up for discussion a couple of months ago is the
vasantatilakaa (for 14 syllables) that you mentioned at the time (if I
remember correctly). This is the same metre used in the opening verses
of Kaccaayanabyaakara.na and Mukhamattadiipanii---works on Pali
grammar. I remember that the Vuttodaya said that the last syllable
could be short where one would expect a long to fit the metre.
Sometimes, we count an extra syllbable in a paada which I think can be
accounted for by looking for two short syllables in the place of an
expected long one.
<< I'd also like to revert to chabbhi. Words like chabbhi and chassu
are natural phonetic devopments from earlier Old Indo-Aryan forms. In
these cases "sa.dbhi.h and "sa.tsu. These words (like chabbhi and
chassu) reflect conditions of an earlier period in the development of
the Pali language. When grammar appeared on the scene, and grammarians
looked at words in terms of roots, stems and endings, they saw that
these sorts of words present difficulties in analyzing in terms of
stems and endings. For the a stem cha- must give chahi in the
instrumental-ablative and chasu in the locative. So they tended
to'corect' such forms to chahi/chasu wherever possible. We can see
thousands of such instances in Pali texts. But there were other
instances where the older, 'uncorrected' forms had to be left as they
were, because of exigencies of metre and such other reasons. Thus
these more natural forms are also numerous in Pali. This is similar to
what happened in the so-called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit works (which
belong to non-Theravada schools). There Prakrit words were replaced,
wherever possible, by Sanskrit words, or words that are Sanskritic in
appearance. But this could never be 100% successful, particularly in
verse. So we have"hybrid Sanskrit" in those texts. >>
The traditional grammars have a ruls that allows for the
instrumental/ablative plural vibhaatti ending -hi in such words as
chahi to be optionally replaced with the substitute (aadesa) -bhi. The
doubling in chabbhi can be accounted for with Kc 28 and 29. Chabbhi is
an extremely rare form in the Tipitaka (only 1 occurrence---our verse
in the Jaataka---from a search of the CSCD disk). There is also only
one occurrence of chabbhii (also in the Jaataka). The m in such forms
as chamhi, chambhii, chambhi is problematic and I haven't been able to
find anything in the grammars to explain it. There is no doubt about
the influence Sanskrit has had on the Pali texts and even the
traditional Pali grammars show this. The consonantal doubling that we
often see in Pali words can usually be explained by looking at their
Sanskrit counterparts as you have done in the case of
chabbhi/"sa.dbhi.h.