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A History of Sanskrit Literature c10: III. Açvaghoṣa and Early Buddhist Kāvya

A History of Sanskrit Literature c10

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III. Açvaghoṣa and Early Buddhist Kāvya

1. Açvaghoṣa's Works

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THE deplorable darkness which still envelops early India renders it impossible to establish with certainty the date of Açvaghoṣa, famous alike as a poet and as a philosopher. Tradition unquestionably makes him a protégé of the famous Kaniṣka, but the matter is complicated by the fact that if the *Sūtrālaṃkāra*¹ is his, he tells two stories in which Kaniṣka's reign seems to be referred to as in the past; this may be explained either on the theory that Kaniṣka died before him, which does not accord with tradition, or on the view that the stories are interpolated in whole or as regards the name, or that there was an earlier Kaniṣka; again an inscription² held to belong to the time of Kaniṣka mentions an Açvaghoṣarāja who has been temerariously identified with the poet. Assuming the validity of the tradition despite these difficulties, the date of Açvaghoṣa would fall to be determined by that of Kaniṣka, for whom *c.* A.D. 100³ still seems a just estimate. Tradition also tells that he was originally a Brahmin, that he first adhered to the Sarvāstivāda school of Buddhism, but was attracted by the doctrine of the saving grace of faith in the Buddha, and became one of the forerunners of the Mahāyāna school. I-tsing, who travelled in India in A.D. 671–95, refers to him as one of the great teachers of the past, and asserts that a collection of his works was still studied in his time. From the colophons of his own works we learn that his mother was named Suvarṇākṣī and that his home was Sāketa, while he is given the style of Ācārya and Bhadanta.

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¹ Nos. 14 and 31 (Huber's trans., Paris, 1908). Cf. Lévi, *JA.* 1896, ii. 444 ff.; Kimura, *IHQ.* i. 417. Kumāralāta (*c.* 150) is more probable.

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² *EI.* viii. 171; S. Ch. Vidyabhusana (POCP. 1919, I. xxxiii ff.) puts Kaniṣka, patron of Açvaghoṣa, about A. D. 320.

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³ Cf. Smith, EHI. pp. 272 ff.; Foucher, *L'Art Gréco-Bouddhique*, ii. 484 ff., 506 ff., who finds in the Çaka epoch merely the beginning of the fifth century of the Maurya epoch, placing Kaniṣka *c.* A. D. 81. Cf. D. R. Sahni, JRAS. 1924, pp. 399 ff.

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Whether the *Mahāyānaçraddhotpāda*, a famous text-book of early Mahāyāna views, or the *Vajrasūcī*, an able and bitter attack on the Brahmanical caste system, are rightly ascribed to Açvaghoṣa need not be discussed, and his dramas are preserved only in fragments, which reveal little of his poetic skill.¹ Of the songs for which he was renowned the *Gaṇḍīstotragāthā* ² displays great metrical skill and attests his comprehension of the power of music; it is an effort to describe in words the religious message carried to the hearts of men by the sounds produced by beating a long strip of wood with a short club. Of later authorship is the *Sūtrālaṃkāra* or *Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā*, which unhappily is preserved only in a fragmentary condition in Sanskrit, though Huber has translated into French the Chinese version of A.D. 405. The wide culture of the writer displays itself in his allusion to the Bhāratan epic³ and the *Rāmāyaṇa*, the Sāṃkhya and Vaiçeṣika philosophies, and Jain tenets, while in the tales he exhibits himself as a fervent believer in the doctrine of the saving power of worship of the Buddha. The collection is made up of tales, in the main already current in literature still preserved, inculcating the Buddhist faith; many are attractive, even pathetic, but the doctrine of devotion carries the author to strange results, as in the tale of the sinner who never in his life did one good deed, but because in deadly terror of his life from attack by a tiger he uttered the salutation, 'Homage to the Buddha', is granted entrance to the order and straightway proceeds to sainthood. From the literary point of view the essential fact is that the tales are written in prose and verse, clearly of the classical type. We need not doubt that this combination was taken over by the author direct from the contemporary Jātakas current in Pāli, even if no strict proof of this view is possible.

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¹ Cf. Keith, *Buddh. Phil.*, pp. 252 ff.; *Sanskrit Drama*, pp. 80 ff.

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² Ed. BB. 15, 1913.

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³ We find two verses from the *Harivaṃça* in the *Vajrasūcī*.

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The *Sūtrālaṃkāra* mentions a *Buddhacarita*, perhaps Açvaghoṣa's work, and there is reason to suppose that that epic was later than the *Saundarananda*.⁴ At the close of that work Açvaghoṣa frankly declares the purpose which led to his adopting the Kāvya form; he recognizes that men rejoice in the delight of the world and seek not salvation, and therefore he sets out the truth which leads to enlightenment in attractive garb, in the hope that men attracted by it may realize the aim and extract from his work the gold alone. As he makes no allusion to an earlier poem, we may conclude that the *Saundarananda* was his first attempt. The topic of the poem is the legend of the conversion of the reluctant Nanda, his half-brother, by the Buddha, a story recounted in the *Mahāvagga* and the *Nidānakathā*, but Açvaghoṣa deals with it in the approved manner of the later Kāvya. He begins with an account of the foundation of Kapilavāstu, which gives him occasion to display his knowledge of heroic tales and mythology (Canto i). There follows the description of the king, Çuddhodana, and briefly an account of the birth of Sarvārthasiddha and his half-brother Nanda. The Buddha is described in full in the next Canto (iii); then we hear of Sundarī's beauty and the perfection of her union with Nanda as of the night with the moon. Reluctantly Nanda leaves her (iv), and the Buddha hastens to secure his ordination as a monk, much against his inclination (v). Bitter is Sundarī's grief (vi), and Nanda himself seeks by a long list of legendary parallels to defend his desire to cling to his beloved; kings of yore have laid aside the hermit's garb and returned to the world of joy and life (vii). In vain are the demerits of women, the flattery on their lips, the treachery in their hearts, pointed out (viii); in vain is he warned of the evils of pride illustrated by the fate of heroes of the past (ix). The Buddha determines on a bolder plan; he carries him to heaven and shows him on the way in the Himālaya a one-eyed ape of hideous form, asking him if Sundarī is fairer than it. Nanda energetically asserts his wife's loveliness, but on the sight of the heavenly Apsarases must admit that their beauty raises them as far above Sundarī as she is above the ape; with fickle faith he resolves to win an Apsaras as bride, but is warned that he must win heaven by good works, if he is to obtain this end (x). Returned to earth he strives for this end, but Ānanda warns him, adducing a wealth of examples, that the joys of heaven are fleeting and that, when man's merit is exhausted, he must return to earth again (xi). Nanda is thus induced to lay aside all thought of heavenly joys and to seek and obtain instruction from the Buddha; he becomes not merely a saint, but on the Buddha's bidding determines on the nobler course of seeking salvation not for himself alone, but of preaching it to others (xii–xviii).

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⁴ Ed. Haraprasād Śāstrī, BI. 1910. Cf. Baston, JA. 1912, i. 79 ff.; Hultzsch, ZDMG. lxxii-lxxiv; Gawroński, *Studies about the Sansk. Buddh. Lit.*, pp. 56 ff.

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The *Buddhacarita*¹ deals with the greater theme of the life of the Buddha, and it is a misfortune that as we have it the poem contains but seventeen Cantos and of these only the first thirteen—with certain exceptions—are genuine, the remainder being an addition made a century ago by Amṛtānanda who records that he did so because he could not find a manuscript of the rest of the text. The poem now ends with the conversions made at Benares, but the Chinese version, made between A. D. 414 and 421, and the Tibetan, have twenty-eight Cantos, and I-tsing still knew of this number. The exact source which influenced Açvaghoṣa in his choice of incident is unknown, for it is not proved that the *Lalitavistara* existed in his time in anything like its present form. In any case the contrast between the two works is remarkable; the *Lalitavistara* is written in the main in Sanskrit prose of the plain type, intermingled with ballads in mixed Sanskrit of the so-called Gāthā style; at best it is confused, at worst incoherent. Açvaghoṣa's poem is essentially the work of an artist; in choice of incident and arrangement he seeks to produce the maximum effect, and, though he does not vary in essentials the tradition, he renders vivid and affecting the scenes which he describes. The prince's fatal journeying forth from the palace which brings him into contact with the hateful spectacle of age, is preceded by the account of the fair women who crowd to watch his exit; the poet again shows his skill in depicting the loving ruses by which the ladies of the harem seek to divert his mind from the desire to renounce the vanities of the world, and in describing the famous scene when the prince gazing on them in their sleep resolves to abandon the palace. Nor is he skilled in the Kāmaçāstra alone; he adduces the arguments by which the family priests, fortified by the precepts of political science, seeks to deter the prince from his resolution to abandon secular life with its duties, and true to the rule which requires a description of a battle he provides a spirited picture of the contest of Buddha against the demon Māra and his monstrous hosts.

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¹ Ed. E. B. Cowell, Oxford, 1893; trans. SBE. 46; Formichi, Bari, 1912. See also Hultzsch, ZDMG. lxxii. 145 ff.; Cappeller, ZII. ii, 1 ff.; Speyer, JRAS. 1914, pp. 105 ff.; Gawroński, *Rocznik Oryentalistyczny*, i. 1 ff.; i–v ed. and trans. K. M. Joglekar, Bombay, 1912. On Buddhist Sanskrit Literature cf. G. K. Nariman, *Sanskrit Buddhism* (1923).

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There is not the slightest doubt of one of the sources of Açvaghoṣa. Though Cowell was unable to find decisive proof of his knowledge of the *Rāmāyaṇa* as opposed merely to the legend of Rāma, the fact is put beyond doubt, apart from a mention of the poem in the *Sūtrālaṅkāra*, by careful study of the references in the *Buddhacarita* itself¹; when the people of the town see that Siddhārtha has not returned they weep as aforetime when the chariot of Daçaratha’s son returned without him; Çuddhodana compares himself to Daçaratha, bereft of Rāma, whose death he envies, and in these and many other passages there is clear knowledge by Açvaghoṣa of the wording of our present text. It was natural that the parallel should deeply affect Açvaghoṣa, and the broad structure of the episode of the return of Sumantra to Ayodhyā without Rāma and of Chandaka to Kapilavāstu without Siddhārtha is unmistakable; the charioteer leaves his master, and returns to the city now sadly changed; the eager citizens rush out to greet him, learn his news, and are filled with lamentation; the women throng the windows and then withdraw in deep depression to their inner chambers; the charioteer enters the presence of the king. Similarly again, Yaçodharā’s lament for the sufferings of the prince in his new life of hardship is modelled on Sītā’s sorrow for her husband’s sufferings in the forest. Nor does it seem reasonable to deny that the description of the aspect of the women of the harem in sleep is based on the portraiture of Rāvaṇa’s harem.²

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¹ Gawroński, *Studies about the Sansk. Buddh. Lit.*, pp. 27 ff.

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² v. 9–11, which Winternitz (GIL. i. 417) asserts to be based on Açvaghoṣa. But see Walter, *Indica*, iii. 13.

2. Açvaghoṣa's Style and Language

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Daṇḍin³ draws a vital distinction between two styles as prevalent in his day, the Gauḍa and the Vaidarbha, eastern and southern, and from his account and other evidence we gather that among the characteristics of the former was the love of long compounds not merely in prose, where they were accepted even by the Vaidarbha, but in verse also; love of alliteration and of harsh sound effects; the use of recondite etymologizing phraseology, and a desire for strength resulting often in bombast and affectation. It has been suggested by Jacobi¹ that the contrast of styles has a historical basis; Sanskrit poetry was practised, it is argued, eagerly in the east and Sanskrit poetry there had developed the evil effects of old age, before the art became current in the west and south. The simpler style of the south was also on this view influenced by the freshness of the lyric of Mahārāṣṭra born of close contact with the people. It is already a serious objection to such a conclusion that in the *Nāṭyaçāstra* we find the qualities which Daṇḍin ascribes as characteristic of the Vaidarbha ascribed to the Kāvya style in general; this is a strong suggestion that at the time of the *Nāṭyaçāstra* there had not developed those characteristics of the Gauḍa style, and that they emerged gradually with the development of poetry at the courts of princes of Bengal.

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This view gains support from the fact that, though Daṇḍin praises the Vaidarbha style, and evidently disapproves of the Gauḍa, in practice poets of later date often affect the Gauḍa manner. Açvaghoṣa, however, affords a more convincing proof still of the early character of the Vaidarbha; his style unmistakably is of the Vaidarbha type; as Bāṇa later says of the western poets, it aims at sense rather than mere ornament; it is his aim to narrate, to describe, to preach his curious but not unattractive philosophy of renunciation of selfish desire and universal active benevolence and effort for the good, and by the clarity, vividness, and elegance of his diction to attract the minds of those to whom blunt truths and pedestrian statements would not appeal. This project left no room for mere elegance or for deliberate straining after effect, and thus it results that Açvaghoṣa’s works attain a high measure of attractiveness, especially when we make the necessary allowance for the decidedly bad condition of the text tradition of both epics. Simple, of course, in the sense in which it can be applied to English poetry, is an inappropriate epithet as regards any Sanskrit Kāvya, but relatively to the later standard, even in some measure to Kālidāsa, Açvaghoṣa's style is simple. Nor may we deny it the epithets of sensuous and passionate;

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the picture of the pleasures of love drawn by Açvaghoṣa is already marked by that wealth of intimate detail which appeals to all Indian poets, but proves a grave stumbling block to critics who find matter for offence even in the charming picture of the deceiving Zeus in the *Iliad* and reprobate in the author of the *Odyssey* the episode of the amour of Ares and Aphrodite. But still more sincere is the burning enthusiasm of the poet for his own ideal, not the Arhat, contented to seek his own freedom from rebirth in this world of misery, but the Bodhisattva, the Buddha to be, who delays, however, his entering into Nirvāṇa until he has accomplished his view of freeing all other creatures from the delusion which makes them cling throughout the ages to mortal life and its woes. This is a new note in Sanskrit poetry; Vālmīki has majesty and a calm seriousness, but he is free from passion like his hero, who though he experiences vicissitudes yet stands apart from them, and of whose ultimate success we never doubt. Nanda's rejection of Sundarī may seem to us heartless enough; his transference of his fickle affection to the Apsarases has its comic side, but in the end he seeks the welfare of others, even as does the Buddha; Rāma on the contrary in his rejection of Sītā after the long agony of separation from him has no warmer motive than obedience to the doctrine that Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

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³ *Kāvyādarça*, i. 40 ff.

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¹ *Ausgewählte Erzählungen in Mâhârâshṭrî*, pp. xvi f.

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As Çuddhodana reminds us of Daçaratha, so Sundarī has traces of Sītā, but with a vehemence of passion unknown to that queen, and without her dignity and steadfast courage. Nor is it in theme and character-drawing alone that Vālmīki is laid under contribution; the metaphors and similes of the *Rāmāyaṇa*¹ appear in more refined form; the king, hearing of his son's final resolve, falls, smitten by sorrow as Indra's banner is lowered when the festival is over (*Çacīpater vṛtta ivotsave dhvajaḥ*); the maidens stand drinking in the prince's beauty with eyes that stay wide open in joy (*niçcalaiḥ prītivikacaiḥ pibantya iva locanaiḥ*); they display their bosoms that are like bowls of gold (*suvarṇakalaçaprakhyān darçayantyaḥ payodharān*). The epic speaks of the ocean laughing with the foam of its waves, the poet embodies the idea in the picture of a sleeping beauty of the harem, with a daintiness of elaboration which is far removed from the epic:

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¹ Cf. Walter, *Indica*, iii. 11 ff.

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*vibabhau karalagnaveṇur anyā: stanavisrastasitāṅçukā çayānā*
*ṛjuṣaṭpadapaṅktijuṣṭapadmā: jalaphenaprahasattaṭā nadīva.*

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‘And one lay resplendent, holding a flute in her hand, while her white garment slipt from her bosom, like unto a river whose banks laugh with the foam¹ of her waves, and in whose lotuses long rows of bees delight.’ Açvaghoṣa unquestionably is at his best in simple and elegant description by which a clear picture is presented to the eyes:

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¹ Cf. *Meghadūta*, 50.

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*tathāpi pāpīyasi nirjite gate: diçaḥ praseduḥ prababhau niçākaraḥ*
*divo nipetur bhuvi puṣpavṛṣṭayo: rarāja yoṣeva vikalmaṣā niçā.*

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‘So when the evil one had retired worsted, the sky became calm, the moon shone forth, flowers fell in rain from heaven on the earth; night shone clear like a maiden free from stain.’ When the charioteer returns:

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*punaḥ kumāro vinivṛtta ity atho: gavākṣamālāḥ pratipedire ’ṅganāḥ*
*viviktapṛṣṭhaṁ ca niçamya vājinam: punar gavākṣāṇi pidhāya cukruçuḥ.*

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‘“’Tis the prince returned”, said the women and rushed to their windows, but, seeing the steed’s back bereft of its master, closed them again and wailed aloud.’ Yaçodharā, who is more akin to Sītā than Sundarī, laments her husband’s new lot:

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*çucau çayitvā çayane hiraṇmaye: prabodhyamāno niçi turyanisvanaiḥ*
*kathaṁ bata svapsyati so ’dya me vratī: paṭaikadeçāntarite mahītale.*

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‘How can he sleep to-night, my faithful one, on one poor mat covering the bare earth, he who hath slept aforetime on a couch of gold undefiled, and whom music hath aroused from his slumbers?’ Açvaghoṣa is also a master of simple pathos:

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*mahatyā tṛṣṇayā duḥkhair garbheṇāsmi yayā dhṛtaḥ*
*tasyā niṣphalayatnāyāḥ kvāhaṁ mātuḥ kva sā mama.*

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'With deep longing and many a pain did she bear me in her womb; all her effort hath come to nought; why was she mother, why was I her son?' As often the idea has a prototype in the *Rāmāyaṇa*,¹ but Açvaghoṣa has heightened by his delicate touch the effect of the whole.

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¹ ii. 53. 20.

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Sanskrit poetry, which does not aim at rhyme, nevertheless is fond of the repetition of the same syllables in close relation, especially if the meaning thus conveyed is altered, and instances of Yamakas, as they are styled, are not rare in Açvaghoṣa as in *praṇaṣṭavatsām iva vatsalāṁ gām*, 'like a loving cow which hath lost its calf', a clear refinement on the *vivatsā vatsalā kṛtā* of the epic; a more elaborate effect is produced in Canto i where stanzas 14–16 approximate to rhyme as in *udārasaṁkhyaiḥ sacivair asaṁkhyaiḥ*, 'with countless ministers of noble counsels' and *samagradevīnivahāgradevī*, 'queen supreme of all the host of queens', but such effects are rarely² sought. Occasionally a phrase is overworked as in *tapaḥpraçāntaṁ sa vanaṁ viveça*, 'he entered the penance grove where penance had ceased', and now and then the poet errs in his display of his culture,³ as when he derives a simile from the use of the verbal form *asti* as a particle, though his successors equally delight to prove by recondite allusions that they are masters of the works of Pāṇini. His own skill is shown especially in Canto ii of the *Saundarananda* where he exhibits his knowledge of aorist forms, and he evidently felt pleasure in the skill which uses *mīyate* as the passive of the three verbs *mā*, *mi*, and *mī*, *ajījipat* as the aorist of *jap* and *ji*, and *adīdipat* as that of *dā* and *do*. On the other hand we find forms which, if excusable, are so only on the ground of the epic, as in the gerunds *gṛhya* and *vivardhayitvā*; beside the common *niçamya*, hearing, we find *niçāmya*, observing, and, while the derivative form *daiçika* is regularly used *sudeçika* stands beside it. The periphrastic future as *ahaṁ praveṣṭā* replaces *praveṣṭāsmi*, and in the use of particles Açvaghoṣa permits himself irregularities which are not rare in Buddhist Sanskrit; thus *kim bata* and *prāg eva* denote ‘how much more’; *saced* is used for *ced*; and, as in the epic, some pleonasm of particles is allowed; we find, unless we amend, *api* repeated, *hi* and *tu* combined in one sentence and even *na jaharṣa na cāpi cānutepe*. Some Buddhist terms occur, such as *prativedha*, *iñjita*, *praçrabdhi*, and *praverita*, while *maitrā*, for the wonted *maitrī*, is based on Pāli *mettā*; moreover it is impossible to defend some of Açvaghoṣa’s genders. But these are minor blemishes in a Sanskrit which is normally grammatically correct.

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² *harituragaturaṅgavatturaṅgaḥ*, *Buddhacarita*, v. 87, is not a success.

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³ The poet shows in a simile his knowledge of the new art of Gandhāra. His use of the technical terms *bhāva* and *hāva* (iv. 12) proves his knowledge of Alaṁkāra, and he fully employs Yathāsaṁkhya, v. 42; ix. 16. For artistic parallels see Foucher, *L'Art Gréco-Bouddhique du Gandhāra*, i. 321, 339 ff.

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Nor is there any real doubt as to Açvaghoṣa’s metrical skill, though the manuscripts do undoubtedly present a text in which metrical deficiencies are not rarely present. In addition to the more easy metres he adopts the Udgatā for Canto iii of the *Saundarananda*, an example followed in Canto xii of the *Kirātārjunīya* and Canto xv of the *Çiçupālavadha*, while the Suvadanā and the Vardhamāna species of the Upasthitapracupita¹ are also found.

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¹ *Saund.* ii. 65; cf. Jacobi, ZDMG. xxxviii. 603; SIFI. VIII. ii. 113.

3. The Avadānas

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Connected with Açvaghoṣa, sometimes identified with him by tradition, is a mysterious Mātṛceṭa,² of whose numerous works fragments alone, from his *Çatapañcāçatika-stotra*,³ exist in Sanskrit. These show a fairly elegant style of religious lyric devotion. The taste of the time, however, seems to have preferred the telling of tales dealing with the endless theme of the fruits of man’s deeds. Moreover the view of the Buddhists who loved these Avadānas⁴—tales of great acts or perhaps of the causes of man’s future⁵—was not a narrowly moral one. They were not content to exemplify the somewhat cold doctrine of the due reward of a man’s actions regarded merely from the moral point of view. They were frankly Buddha worshippers and believed wholeheartedly in the efficacy of any act of devotion to the Buddha or his followers as having the power to influence indefinitely for good the life of man; equally they held that an insult to the Buddha was certain to bear appalling fruit. Of the Avadāna texts preserved the oldest may be the *Avadānaçataka*,¹ which is stated to have been rendered into Chinese in the first half of the third century A.D., and which, as containing the term *dīnāra*, can hardly belong to any period earlier than A.D. 100. Artistically the work has scanty merit; its arrangement in ten decades each according to subject-matter is schematic; the tales open with set formulae, contain set formulae of description, as of the laughter of the Buddha, and of moral exhortation; exaggeration and long-windedness mark the whole, and beauty of form is sacrificed to the desire to be edifying. From this point of view, indeed, the tales often reveal thoughts of some beauty; Maitrakanyaka, condemned for wrongs done to his mother to endure in hell the punishment of bearing on his head a wheel of red-hot iron for 66,000 years until another who has committed a like sin comes to relieve him of his burden, resolves that rather will he for ever and ever endure the pain, and is rewarded forthwith by the disappearance of the instrument of torment. Çrīmatī, wife of Bimbisāra, pays homage to the relics of the Buddha which the king had enclosed in a Stūpa for worship by the ladies of his harem; the parricide Ajātaçatru forbids such homage on pain of death, but Çrīmatī disobeys, and, slain by the king's order, is born again in the world of the gods.

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² Cf. Thomas, ERE. viii. 495.

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³ Lévi, JA. 1910, ii. 433–56; Poussin, JRAS. 1911, pp. 759–77. For his *Varṇanārhavarṇana* see Thomas, IA. xxxiv. 145 ff.

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⁴ Przyluski (*La légende de l’empereur Açoka* (1923), pp. viii f., 214) holds that there were two Vinayas of the Sarvāstivādins, one of Mathurā with Avadānas or Jātakas, one of Kashmir without them; the *Divyāvadāna* may all be derived from the first of these Vinayas; Lévi, *T'oung Pao*, viii. 105–22; JA. 1914, ii. 494.

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⁵ Zimmer, ZII. iii. 203 ff.

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¹ Ed. J. S. Speyer, BB. 3, 1902–9; trans. L. Feer, AMG. 18, 1891.

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Far more interesting as literature is the *Divyāvadāna*,² a collection of legends which draws, like the *Avadānaçataka*, largely on the *Vinayapiṭaka* of the Sarvāstivādin school of Buddhism. Its date is uncertain; its origin is complex; one section is definitely described as a Mahāyāna Sūtra, while the body of the work is still of the Hīnayāna school. The term *dīnāra* occurs, and one famous tale, the Çārdūlakarṇāvadāna, was rendered into Chinese in A.D. 265. It tells how the Buddha by his skill in persuasion converted to the faith the maiden Prakṛti, who had conceived a deep love for the beloved disciple Ānanda and would have won him from his vows, had he not at the moment of his greatest danger sought refuge in his master’s strength. The gem of the collection is doubtless the pathetic legend of Kunāla, son of Açoka,¹ whose false stepmother succeeds in poisoning his father’s mind against him and in having him blinded without his permitting himself either hate or reproach. We find, however, also a still more gruesome and to us repellent theme in the tale of Rūpavatī, who severs her own breasts in order to feed a hungry mother when on the point of eating her own child; Rūpavatī is extolled as a pattern of the Bodhisattva who seeks to save the whole world, and is accorded the somewhat quaint honour of being reborn as a prince, Rūpavata.

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² Ed. E. B. Cowell and R. A. Neil, Cambridge, 1886.

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¹ The original *Açokāvadāna*, according to Przyluski, *La légende de l’empereur Açoka* (1923), was composed by a monk of Mathurā about two centuries before Kaniṣka (between 150–100 B. C.).

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The style of the book is very uneven, as a result of the diversity of its sources. Besides ordinary simple Sanskrit prose, intermingled here and there with Gāthās, we find here and there passages in elaborate metres and prose with the long compounds approved by writers on poetics. Thus Avadāna xxxviii is a version in elaborate style of the story of Maitrakanyaka in the form found in the *Avadānaçataka*. More interesting to us is the preservation, as part of the cycle of legends of Açoka (xxvi–xxix), of the dramatic episode of the conversion of the demon Māra by the virtuous Upagupta. The idea, ingenious in itself, is carried out with spirit and imagination; Māra is converted and Upagupta, who desires to see with his eyes the Buddha long since dead, asks him to appear before him in the Buddha’s form. Māra obeys, and the devotee falls down in worship before the wondrous apparition of the master he loved. We can recognize here, without question, borrowing from Açvaghoṣa in manner, as in substance from the *Sūtrālaṁkāra*; style and metre are of the classical type which his poems display. Moreover, we can trace² in this section of the work clear instances of knowledge of the *Buddhacarita* and even of the less popular *Saundarananda*; thus Gupta’s son is described as beautiful beyond men but yet inferior to the gods (*atikrānto mānuṣavarṇam asamprāptaç ca divyavarṇam*), and this somewhat clumsy expression can hardly be derived from any source other than Açvaghoṣa’s elegant *atītya martyān anupetya devān*.

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² Gawroński, *Studies about the Sansk. Buddh. Lit.*, pp. 49 ff.

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Similarly, both xxii and xxxviii contain reminiscences of the *Buddhacarita* both in the polish of their style and in actual verbal similarities; in the latter we have:

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*tṛṣṇānilaiḥ çokaçikhāpracaṇḍaiḥ: cittāni dagdhāni bahuprakāram*
*āçāvatāṁ sapraṇayābhirāmair: dānāmbuṣekaiḥ çamayāmbabhūva.*

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‘The flames of desire, kindled by sorrow, in the minds of those full of longing were extinguished by the torrents of his generosity, made beautiful by his courtesy.’

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In the less polished parts of the collection we find many curious specimens of the influence of Pāli or Prākrit on the writers. Thus we have forms like *sarpi* for *sarpis*, *parvaḥ* for *parva*, *yam* for *yat*, *tāvanta* for *tāvant*, *pīthi* for *vīthi*. The use of particles often deviates from Sanskrit practice: thus *api* ... *api* serves as equivalent to *et* ... *et*; *apy eva* means perhaps, *prāg eva* often, *yāvat quippe*; the favourite Buddhist form of denoting place, *yena* ... *tena*, is common; and *yataḥ*, *yadbhūyasā*, *tatprathamataḥ*, and *yat khalu* are common as conjunctions. As prepositions we find *sarvānte*, after, *sakāmam*, to please, *sthāpayitvā*, except. Rare words and meanings abound, as *āpatti*, sin, *kola*, raft, *gulma*, custom-house, *uddhava*, cheerfulness, *paribhāṣ*, abuse, *niçritya*, going to, *pragharati*, ooze forth (*prakṣar-*),¹ *vyatisārayati kathām*, converse, *anyatara*, *anyatama*, any one, *bhūyasyā mātrayā*, still more.

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¹ The Vedic *ghṛ* may be the origin of this formation, if it is not itself a Prākritism; cf. Geiger, *Pāli*, p. 67.

4. Ārya Çūra and later Poetry

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The influence of Açvaghoṣa is unquestionably to be traced in the elegant and interesting collection of lectures or sermons in the form of edifying anecdotes of the Buddha’s action in former births produced by Ārya Çūra under the style of *Jātakamālā*.² The mere fact that the tales appear in Sanskrit of the Kāvya type is sufficient proof of the spread of the use of that language for purposes of literature and discussion in the courtly circles in which, we may safely assume, Ārya Çūra moved and lived. The material of the tales was doubtless ready to hand; nearly all of them are extant in the Pāli Jātaka book,¹ and twelve of them are also found in the Pāli *Cariyāpiṭaka*. Moreover, as in that book, the tales are told with the definite purpose of illustrating the various perfections (*pāramitās*) ascribed by Buddhist theory to the Buddha to be. Their chief defect to modern taste is the extravagance which refuses to recognize the Aristotelian mean. The very first tale, which is not in the Jātaka book, tells of the extraordinary benevolence of the Bodhisattva who insists on sacrificing his life in order to feed a hungry tigress, whom he finds on the point of devouring the young whom she can no longer feed, and the other narratives are no less inhuman in the disproportion between the worth of the object sacrificed and that for whose sake the sacrifice is made. But these defects were deemed rather merits by contemporary and later taste. I-tsing mentions the *Jātakamālā* as one of the popular works among Buddhists of his day, and the frescoes of Ajaṇṭā include both pictures and verses, proving the existence then of the text. The date of this evidence, unfortunately, is not certain, but the style of writing suggests the sixth century, and with this accords the fact that a Chinese rendering of another work of Ārya Çūra was made in A. D. 434. The author may then have written in the third, or more probably the fourth, century.

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² Ed. H. Kern, HOS. i, 1891; trans. J. S. Speyer, London, 1895. Cf. Lüders, GN. 1902, pp. 758 ff.; F. W. Thomas, *Album Kern*, pp. 405 ff.; on the Chinese version, Ivanovski, RHR. xlvii. 298 ff.; cf. E. Wohlgemuth, *Über die chinesische Version von Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita* (Leipzig, 1916).

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¹ GN. 1918, pp. 464 ff.

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Ārya Çūra's style is classical, showing command of the resources of his art, but restrained and saved from exaggeration by good taste. His prose and verse alike are careful and polished, and, though he is not averse to the use of fairly long compounds, especially in prose, he employs them naturally and is seldom obscure. His good taste is conspicuous in the lines put in the mouth of the son whose father in his insensate generosity has given away his wife and children; the child speaks in simple but pathetic words:

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*naivedaṁ me tathā duḥkhaṁ yad ayaṁ hanti māṁ dvijaḥ*
*nāpaçyam ambāṁ yat tv adya tad vidārayatīva mām*

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*rodiṣyati ciraṁ nūnam ambā çūnye tapovane*
*putraçokena kṛpaṇā hataçāveva cātakī.*
*asmadarthe samāhṛtya vanān mūlaphalaṁ bahu*
*bhaviṣyati kathaṁ nv ambā dṛṣṭvā çūnyaṁ tapovanam?*
*ime nāv açvakās tāta hastikā rathakāç ca ye*
*ato ’rdhaṁ deyam ambāyai çokaṁ tena vineṣyati.*

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‘’Tis not so much that the Brahmin beats me that causes me sorrow, but that I have not seen my mother to-day pierces my heart. Long will my mother weep in the penance grove, now lonely, sorrowing for the woes of her children, like a cuckoo whose young are slain. She has gathered for our sake many a fruit and root from the forest; how then will she feel when she sees the penance grove left lonely? Here, daddy, are our toy horses, our elephants, our cars; give a half to mother; thus will she assuage her grief.’ But he is equally happy in more elaborate themes, as in the description of the rule of the just king:

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*samaprabhāvā svajane jane ca: dharmānugā tasya hi daṇḍanītiḥ*
*adharmyam āvṛtya janasya mārgaṁ: sopānamāleva divo babhūva.*

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‘Impartial to kin and stranger alike, his rule followed in the steps of righteousness; blocking the path of unrighteousness to men, it was as a ladder to raise them to the sky.’ No doubt in his language there are traces here and there of Pālicisms,¹ but these do not seriously detract from Ārya Çūra’s claim to correctness of language, and his metrical skill is considerable.

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¹ He is praised in the *Saduktikarṇāmṛta*, ZDMG. xxxvi. 365. For his Pālicisms. see Franke, IF. v. Anz. 31.

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The form of his tales as composed of prose with verses intermingled, now singly, now in larger numbers, is of historical interest. It is not, of course, an invention of Ārya Çūra, who followed Kumāralāta and doubtless many others in the employment of this style. But its origin is disputed. Oldenberg² developed with his usual skill the thesis that the original form of literature in India, as perhaps elsewhere, was prose, with verses interposed at those points where the primitive mind naturally tends to give utterance to its feelings in verse form, as when a god is invoked, a curse is pronounced, a benediction uttered, a prayer put up, in short at any point where emotion is let free and the pedestrian prose is inadequate as an expression of the feeling. He has found proofs of the existence of literature of this kind in the *Ṛgveda*, the Brāhmaṇas, the epic, and in Pāli texts, including the Jātakas. In principle the verses alone were preserved in fixed form, and they only received skill and care, the prose being supplied by those who told the tales. The process of development which followed was, on the one hand, the elimination of the prose by substituting verse, and it has been suggested that a remnant of the old condition is to be found in the *Mahābhārata*, where the speakers in case of dialogue are given in prose, while in the more finished *Rāmāyaṇa* such devices are unknown, the poet, like the authors of the *Iliad* and *Odyssey*, working into verse the name of the spokesman. On the other hand, the step was taken of applying to the prose the artistic polish which marked the verse, and Oldenberg¹ claims that, apart from an exceptional case like the *Kuṇāla Jātaka* of the Pāli Jātaka book, where the verses are accompanied by an ornate prose, the *Jātakamālā* and the *Pañcatantra* or *Tantrākhyāyika* are among the earliest examples of this form.

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² GGA. 1909, pp. 66 ff.; GN. 1911, pp. 459 ff.; 1919, pp. 79 ff. Cf. Winternitz, WZKM. xxiii. 102 ff.

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¹ *Altind. Prosa*, pp. 82 ff. What is true is that elaboration of prose style is later than and based on development of verse; cf. Jacobi, *Compositum und Nebensatz*, p. 93, who cites the symmetrical Varṇakas of the Jain canon and their long compounds (cf. IS. xvii. 389 ff.).

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It seems clear for reasons elsewhere adduced² that the theory is not substantiated by Vedic evidence, and that it must stand or fall according as other considerations may appear to render it credible. The evidence of comparative literature is still quite inadequate to support it, and from the Indian point of view matters can much more simply be explained. The earliest form of prose with verse intermingled which we find in Indian literature appears to be that in which gnomic verse is cited to illustrate what is stated in the prose; this is akin to the practice of the Brāhmaṇas to adduce occasionally Yajñagāthās, verses on sacrificial points, in their discussions, and to the habit of the Dharma-sūtras to enforce the rules which they lay down with verse citations. Here and there in the Upaniṣads we find similar cases, verses being cited in illustration and explanation of a doctrine stated in prose; in these cases it is made quite clear that the verses are quotations, from which, no doubt, it was an easy step to the writer composing verses of his own to enliven his theme or summarize his moral. The Kārikās found in the *Mahābhāṣya* prove that grammarians recognized the convenience of thus putting on record in easily remembered and accurate form their observations on disputed points. In the case of narrative the evidence seems clearly to indicate that originally in India prose and verse were used independently; if so, it is easy to understand how they could come to be combined, especially as in the other instances adduced above there already existed examples of the combination of verse and prose in one literary form. The few cases in the epic of prose and verse combined seem to be distinctly instances of contamination, not remnants of an older form of composition. How far models in Pāli were available for the author of the *Jātakamālā* or Kumāralāta we cannot, of course, prove, for the Jātaka book in Pāli as we have it presents grave problems which are yet unsolved. But the *Kuṇāla Jātaka* at any rate suggests that it would be unwise to claim that the transition first took place in Sanskrit versions of Jātaka tales.

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² Keith, JRAS. 1911, pp. 979 ff.; 1912, pp. 429 ff.; HOS. xxv. 43 ff. There are cases of intermixture of prose and verse in other languages, e. g. Latin (Varro's *Saturae Menippeae*, Petronius, Martianus Capella (*c.* A. D. 400), Boethius (480–524), and two novels, Julius Valerius (*c.* 300) and *Historia Apollonii Tyrii*; Teuffel-Schwabe, *Rom. Lit.*, §§ 28, 165, 305, 399, 452, 478, and 489); Norse; Mediaeval Irish (Windisch, *Irische Texte*, iii. 447 ff.); Chinese; Old Picard, *Aucassin et Nicolett*; Boccaccio's *L'Ameto*; Sa'dī's *Gulistān*; Basutos and Eskimos (MacCulloch, *Childhood of Fiction*, pp. 480 ff.); Gray, *Vāsavadattā*, p. 32.

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Other Buddhist writers contributed much less to literature than to philosophy. The mysterious Nāgārjuna, perhaps of the latter part of the second century A.D., in his *Madhyamakakārikās* shows a perverse ability to develop paradoxes, while Ārya Deva (*c.* A.D. 250) in his *Catuḥçatikā*¹ shows considerable power of irony in his onslaught on the Brahmanical practice of bathing in the Ganges to remove sin and acquire merit. The *Çiṣyalekhadharmakāvya*² of Candragomin, in which instruction is given in the form of a letter to a pupil dealing with the essential facts of the Buddhist faith, has a predecessor in the *Suhṛllekha*¹ of Nāgārjuna, in which he summarizes Buddhist doctrine for a king, unhappily unidentified. The *Subhāṣitāvali* cites a verse actually found in the letter, though omitted in the Tibetan version:

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¹ Ed. Calcutta, 1914. On his *Hastavālaprakaraṇavṛtti*, cf. Thomas and Ui, JRAS. 1918, pp. 267 ff. Cf. P. L. Vaidya, *Études sur Āryadeva* (Paris, 1923).

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² Ed. I. P. Minayeff, *Zapiski*, iv.

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¹ Trans. H. Wenzel, JPTS. 1886, pp. 1 ff.; for the king Sātavāhana, cf. Vidyabhusana, POCP. 1919, ii. 125.

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*viṣasya viṣayāṇāṁ ca dūram atyantam antaram*
*upabhuktaṁ viṣaṁ hanti viṣayāḥ smaraṇād api.*

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‘Vast indeed the difference between poison and objects of sense; poison slays only when tasted, but the things of sense by mere thought thereof.’ The name of the author is given in the text as Candragopin, but on the whole it is improbable that he is to be distinguished from Candragomin, and we may place him in the seventh century A.D., as his grammar was used in the *Kāçikā Vṛtti*, while he seems to have been alive as late as the time of I-tsing, though his reference is not free from doubt. As might be expected from a grammarian, the poem is written in correct and fluent Sanskrit, but without special distinction.

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The case is other with Çāntideva, author of the laborious compendium of Buddhist dogmatics of the Mahāyāna school, the *Çikṣāsamuccaya*, in his *Bodhicaryāvatāra*,² in which he sketches the career of him who seeks to attain Buddhahood as opposed to the narrow Hīnayāna ideal of saintship. Çāntideva, who lived in the seventh century and whom tradition alleges to have been the son of a king who was induced by the goddess Tārā to lay aside royal state, disclaims any literary pretension; he writes for himself only and for those of nature akin to his. His poem is a strange blend of passionate devotion to the aim of aiding men to achieve freedom from the miseries of life coupled with the utter negativism of the Mahāyāna philosophy. There is nothing real, nothing can be gained or lost, none honoured or despised; joy and sorrow, love and hate, all are idle names, without reality; search as you will, nothing can be found that is. None the less Çāntideva seems to be intoxicated with the nobility of the aim of seeking to be a saviour of mankind; the good we do in our efforts is a joy to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas; we are allied with them in the struggle to attain the end. It is a delusion by which we treat our own bodies as something essentially our own; we must realise that the grief of another is our own, the joy of another not alien to us. The poetic power of the author stands out brilliantly when contrasted with the uninspired verses in which his predecessors Vasubandhu and his brother Asaṅga, probably in the fourth century, preached their doctrines. Of the latter we have the *Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāra*, written in correct but undistinguished Sanskrit, utterly overloaded with technicalities, and, despite its great length and the obvious efforts of the author to express himself effectively, deplorably obscure. But the poem is of literary interest as proving how fully Buddhist teachers had adopted Sanskrit as their literary medium.

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² Ed. de la Vallée Poussin, BI. 1901 ff.; trans. Paris, 1907.

Linked texts (32)