टीकाद्वयसमेत शिवभद्रकाव्यम् - प्रथमः आश्वासक(Śivabhadrakāvya with Two Commentaries - First Section)

Smt. Nilanjana S. Shah’s English-language article Śivabhadra’s Śivabhadrakāvya (with two commentaries) presents an edition and study of a rare Yamaka-kāvya, a poem that employs complex alliterative patterns known as yamaka. The poem, consisting of ninety-four verses, recounts an episode from the Rāmāyaṇa, focusing on Rāma’s distress during the rainy season after Sītā’s abduction and his admonition of Sugrīva for neglecting his pledge. Shah provides details about three manuscripts—two from the L. D. Institute of Indology and one from a private collection—and discusses their provenance, script, length and approximate dates. She summarises the life of the poet Śivabhadra, a Jain monk and son of Śivabhadrachārya, situating him in the context of Jain monastic scholarship and dating him to around the fifth century A.D. The introduction analyses the literary features of the poem: its use of the sustained yamaka technique, its eight āryā metres, and its embellishment with figures of speech such as upamā, rūpaka and utprekṣā. Shah then prints the full Sanskrit text of the Śivabhadrakāvya along with two commentaries—one anonymous, the other by Śāntisūri—explaining obscure words, grammatical constructions and rhetorical devices. Footnotes cross-reference readings from the manuscripts and standard works like the Aṣṭādhyāyī. The article thus preserves and elucidates an important but little-known Jain poetic work, shedding light on the literary culture of medieval Gujarat and the skill of Jain monk-poets in experimenting with sophisticated poetic forms.

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