48 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF KAVYA LITERATURE
fable. We have allusions 1 to such proverbial tales as that of the goat and the razor (ajakrpaniya), of the crow and the palm fruit {kakataliyd), and to the hereditary enmity of the snake and the ichneumon, and of the crow and the owl, later famous as the theme of a book of the Pancatantra.
Corroboration of the evidence of Patanjali can be obtained from the Chandassutra of Pingala, which ranks as a Vedanga but is mainly devoted to the exposition of secular prosody. Pingala ranks as an ancient sage, being .sometimes identified with Patanjali ; the aspect of his work suggests considerable age, and many of the metres which he describes are certainly not de- rived from the Kavya literature which has come down to us. They suggest a period of transition in which the authors of the erotic lyric 2 were trying experiment after experiment in metrical effect. The names of the metres can often most plausibly be ex- plained as epithets of the beloved ; the stanzas may have been so styled because the word in question occurred in them. Thus we have the metre Kantotplda, the plague of her lovers, Kutila- gati, she of crooked gait, Cancalaksika, she of the glancing eyes, Tanumadhya, she of the slender waist, Caruhasini, the sweet- smiling one, and Vasantatilaka, the pride of spring. Other names suggest poetic observation of animal life ; thus we have Acvalalita, the gait of the horse, Kokilaka, the cry of the cuckoo, Sinhonnata, tall as a lion, Qardulavikrldita, the tiger's play. The plant world gives others as Manjarl, the cluster, Mala, the garland. That a strong school of lyric poetry existed about the Christian era and probably much earlier we cannot seriously doubt ; to its influence we may with reason ascribe the appearance and bloom of the Maharastrl lyric about A.D. 200.
4. Kavya in Inscriptions
Chance has preserved for us certain evidence in the early in- scriptions 3 which disposes definitely of the theory of the dormancy of Sanskrit during the period of foreign invasions in India. An inscription at Girnar * dated about A. D. 150-2 under the Maha-
1 Mahabkasya, li. 1. 3 ; v. 3. 106 ; IS. xiii. 4S6.
2 Jacobi, ZDMG. xxxvni. 615 f.
s Buhler, Die indischen Inschrtften und das Alter der indischen Kunstpoeste (1 890).
- EI. vin. 36 ff. ; EHI. pp. 139 f. ; IA. xlviii. 145 f.
