As the name of this book indicates, it contains one hundred Dwipadas (couplets) as a Shatdal (a kind of lotus) contains one hundred petals. Some of my non-Hindi speaking friends, quite at home in English, but not so in Hindi, insisted on my giving an English version of it in order that they may better comprehend it. This was a tedious task for me. In producing this book I had to work harder than in any of my previous books-"Jeewan-Yan,' 'Sootradhar' and 'Jeewan-Sootra, each much bigger than this.
In the remote past when a man, given more to emotion than to reason, felt much excited, he gave vent to his feeling, I think, in a rhythmic line or two. Later on, people of poetic genius or musical talent began to rhyme such two lines or sentences and provide a determinate length to each one. In course of time, a pair of successive lines, rhythmic and rhymed, having the same length, came to be known as 'Couplet' in English and 'Doha' in Hindi. Its form is quite suitable for the forceful expression of a great ideal or idea, a moral or a message and a universal truth or a philosophical thought about some problem of life.
A couplet does not necessarily make a complete sense. When it conveys a complete sense, especially when it expresses, a terse or pithy saying, it is often called a 'Distich'. Hindi couplets, in general, are distichs. They are usually impersonal in kind. They are more objective than subjective the more objective in nature, the more estimable in worth. To compose such a couplet is indeed a hard nut to crack. It requires a very careful selection of words, both proper and pure, to be used in a compact structure. A couplet-writer has to set forth more substance in less space, to give it a graceful movement and to make it self-dependent as well. He tries to express the maximum of sense in the minimum of words.
Inasmuch as a couplet has excellent words arranged in an excellent order, it is very sweet to the ear and easy to the tongue. It pleases the heart and inspires the mind, and so appealing both to emotion and To reason. One can learn it soon and retain it long. When quoted, it corroborates our idea and adds to its effect. We are thereby benefitted to a great extent. It is a never-failing friend of ours. It, thus, thoroughly accords to the opinion of S. T. Coleridge, 'perhaps the greatest of English critics' as commented by T. S. Eliot and to that of Horace, an eminent Greek essayist.
Coleridge holds that poetry is a composition of "the best words in the best order." Horace 's opinion is that "Poets desire either to improve or to please, or to unite the agreeable and the profitable." In view of all this, a couplet's claim that it contains true poetry can be called in question by no means.
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