The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.74

c28.74

¹ Chinese translation, made in A. D. 472, of a lost Sanskrit work called the *Śrī Dharmapiṭaka-sampradāya-nidāna* (?), in Lévi, *Notes sur les Indo-Scythes*, p. 36. According to a Tibetan tradition, Kanishka dispatched a friendly invitation to Aśvaghosha, who, being unable to accept it on account of age and infirmities, sent his disciple Jñāna Yaśa in his stead (transl. of *Sumpālī Ch'oijūng* in *J. Buddhist Text Soc.*, 1893, pt. iii, p. 13). A variant version is given in Schiefner's *Tāranāth*, ch. xii; and another by Watters (ii, 104), who says that the saint was given to Ka-ni-t'a (Kanishka), king of the Yue-ti, as part of a war indemnity. The form Kanit'a, with aspirated *t*, used by the Chinese author, is explained by the tradition of the local Brahmans of Kanishkapura (Kānispōr), who ascribe the foundation of the place to Kanishṭha Rāja (Stein, transl. *Rājat.*, Bk. I, v. 168, note). This king, Kanit'a, treated the bhikshu with much kindness and esteem, and Aśvaghosha continued his labours in his new place of abode in Kashmīr. Watters adds that 'this great Buddhist, who apparently lived in the second century of our era, was a poet, musician, scholar, religious controversialist, and zealous Buddhist monk, orthodox in creed, and a strict observer of discipline'. Aśvaghosha was a pupil of Pārśva, who took a leading part in Kanishka's Council (Watters, i, 209); M. Foucher also holds independently, from 'le témoignage des bas-reliefs', that Aśvaghosha lived in the second century after Christ (*L'Art gréco-bouddhique*, i, 623).