A History of Sanskrit Literature c10.s1.11

c10.s1.11

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.