A History of Sanskrit Literature c10.s3.10

c10.s3.10

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*.