The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c10.57

c10.57

Does this mean that we must blandly accept for the known documents all its features, and that, on the other hand, in order to fix the date of every new version, it will be sufficient to refer it to the corresponding degree on this chronological scale? In the case of a figured monument we should be rather inclined to believe so, provided that it is upon inquiry verified whether by chance it were not a case of some more or less archaizing imitation. As soon as it is a text that is concerned, the question becomes much more delicate, and from the very beginning we fall again into our difficulties. For the most part the table furnishes us with nothing more than simple presumptions, and these need still to be correctly interpreted. It affirms, for example, that the *Sūtrālaṅkāra* represents the state of the legend current from the Vth century of our era; and of this fact we have, in truth, two indisputable proofs. The one, of an artistic order, is the fresco of Cave XVII of Ajaṇṭā (VIth century). The other, literary, but by a happy chance dated exactly as belonging to the second quarter of the VIIth century, is nothing less than a passage from Hiuan-tsang: the story of the Shaḍdanta, gathered by the great pilgrim at Benares, is, as M. S. Lévi has already pointed out in his admirable article on the *Sūtrālaṅkāra et ses sources*, « an exact and faithful résumé of the story of Açvaghosha »(¹). What are we to deduce from these statements? As the name of the author scarcely allows us to bring the work lower down than the IInd century of our era, must we hasten to conclude, as we might be tempted to do, that the account of the « white elephant with six tusks » is only a late addition? This story forms a part of the XIVth chapter. Now M. Ed. Huber warns us in his preface « that one of the first catalogues of the Chinese Tripitaka, the Li tai san pao ki, drawn up in A. D. 597, gives only ten chapters » to the Sûtrâlankâra. Besides, we feel to what a degree this collection of tales (which, like that of the Jâtakamâlâ, must at a very early date have been used by Buddhist sermon-writers for the needs of their daily preachings) was ill-defended against interpolations... — This is all very well and good; and after all the thing is possible: but surely the place assigned to the Sûtrâlankâra in our list by its conception of the Shaḍdanta-jâtaka does not authorise us to conclude from it anything of the kind. What, in fact, does it prove? That this text already contains the form which the legend had assumed in the imagination of the artist painters of the VIth, and in the memory of the guides of the VIIth, century. And in what way does it prevent the poetic talent of Açvaghosha from having been the first to put into circulation the elaborate version which, as we have just seen, was coherent in all its parts and destined to have great success and definitely to supplant the far too primitive account of the stanzas of the Jâtaka? Two or three centuries may not have been too much for this literary production to become popular in its turn; and here we find positively no peremptory reason invalidating its authenticity. The best course, with a view to the solution of this question — as of the question how far the Chinese translation is adequate to the Sanskrit original — is to leave it to the future, especially now that we may hope for everything from the discoveries of manuscripts in Central Asia (¹).