Buddhist India c19.17

c19.17

Of these the first was composed in the Ganges valley. The author and date are unknown; but it is probably as late as the third century of our era. It forms one of a collection of legends called the Divyāvadāna. The exact force of this title is somewhat ambiguous. Avadāna means a story, but as it is used exclusively of the life-story of a person distinguished in the religion, the collection corresponds to the *Vitæ Sanctorum* of the Christian Church. We know so little, as yet, of the literature in Buddhist Sanskrit that we cannot form any clear idea of the method by which the tradition it has preserved was handed down.