Chando-viciti—a Note

Suresh Chandra Banerji’s note on “Chando‑viciti” addresses the scholarly debate over a phrase found in Dandin’s Kāvyādarśa: “Chandovicityam sakalas tatprapañco nidarśitaḥ …,” which has been interpreted variously as a reference to a lost work. Banerji explains that the term “chando‑viciti” has puzzled scholars, some of whom—including Peterson and Jacobi—believed it referred to a third literary work by Dandin, alongside the Daśakumāracarita and Kāvyādarśa. Others have speculated that it denotes the Mṛcchakaṭikā or a chapter appended to Kāvyādarśa. Banerji reviews these hypotheses and notes that the evidence for Dandin’s authorship of multiple works is sparse. Citing Pischel and K. K. De, he argues that “chando‑viciti” is not the title of a treatise but simply refers to the science of metrics. He supports this interpretation by referring to the Apastamba‑Dharmasūtra, which lists chando‑viciti among the six Vedāṅgas Haradatta’s commentary glosses it as the study of metres. Banerji observes that this early evidence contradicts later suggestions that Dandin wrote a text by that name. He also points out that the Nāṭyaśāstra tradition in South India styles its fifteenth chapter “Chando‑viciti,” which may have led some to misinterpret Dandin’s line. After analysing the sources, Banerji concludes that “chando‑viciti” in Dandin’s verse simply signals the domain of prosody and not a particular book. He advises caution in attributing lost works to famous authors on the basis of ambiguous references. The note ends with brief remarks on the importance of metrics as a Vedāṅga and its early codification.

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