THE EVIDENCE OF PATANJALI AND PINGALA 47
' Fraught with life, not with poison, are the blows that teachers give ; vice grows by indulgence, virtue prospers by reproof.' The inevitability of death is recorded :
ahar ahar nayamano gam agvam purusam pa gum Vaivasvato na trpyati surety a iva durmadl.
' Though day by day he takes his toll in cattle, horses, men, and beasts, Vivasvant's son is sated never, as a drunkard is never wearied of brandy.' A maxim of political wisdom may be seen in
kseme subhikse krtasamcayani : purani rajnam vinayanti kopam.
' Citadels well stored in peace and abundance calm the wrath of kings.'
Noteworthy also is the fact that in the scanty number of verses there occur specimens of such ornate metres as the MalatI, the Praharsini, the Pramitaksara, and the Vasantatilaka, beside the normal C/loka and Tristubh. 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 Karikas, 1 mostly, if not all, written probably by predecessors of Patanjali, which deal with disputed points of grammar. Among these are besides the C/loka and Vaktra, Indravajra, Upajati, CalinI, Van- castha,all later usual, and the much less common metres, SamanI, consisting of four verses each of four trochees, Vidyunmala, similarly made up of spondees, the anapaestic Totaka, 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 Totaka and Dodhaka have been sus- pected of Prakritic origin, and the latter of ultimate Greek origin, but these are unproved hypotheses without literary or other support.
In addition to the clear indications thus given of the existence of epic, lyric, and gnomic verse, we may deduce from other hints the existence of the material whence later developed the beast -
1 Cf. Kielhorn, IA. xv. 229 ff. ; Jacobi, Festschrift Wackernagel, p. 127.
