Dear Dr. Karashima,
Many thanks for the fascinating and very prompt reply. Indeed the Triṣṭubh-Jagatī mixture is similar to Upajāti-Vaṃśastha mix. I found it curious that this phenomenon is observed only in one particular chapter in the text I am looking at. If I understand your thesis correctly, you suggested that the mixed meter is an archaic feature and the parallel version without mixed meter was standardized subsequently. If this was the case for this rather difficult chapter of the Vṛddhayavanajātaka, this may then be interpreted as a vestige of an older version which somehow resisted standardization.
Is there any explanation for why this mixture came into being in the first place, especially in Buddhist texts and epics? If one considers the two meters as catalectic/acatalectic version of each other, and if one meter is predominant (upajāti in this chapter 66.3%, in the entire work probably 99.9%), wouldn’t the other be considered hypermetrical?
Best regards,
Bill Mak
Dear Dr. Mak,
They are not hypermetrical. A mixture of Triṣṭubh and Jagatī metres in one stanza is found in verses of the old stratum of the Mahābhārata, in the older Pali scriptures, e.g. the Suttanipāta, Dhammapada, Theragāthā etc., in the Mahāvastu, and in the older so-called "Mahāyāna" scriptures, such as the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, Samādhirñasūtra etc. See my article: "The Triṣṭubh-Jagatī Verses in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka" (
https://www.academia.edu/23891666/The_Triṣṭubh-Jagatī_Verses_in_the_Saddharmapuṇḍarīka).
With best regards,
Seishi Karashima