A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.s2.32

c16.s2.32

To Harṣavardhana are ascribed certain Buddhist hymns, composed, we may presume, in the last years of his reign, including the *Aṣṭamahāçrīcaityastotra*² and the *Suprabhātastotra*,³ which has also been ascribed to Çrīharṣa, of the *Naiṣadhīya*. A later writer, Sarvajñamitra, is the author of the *Sragdharāstotra*⁴ to Tārā, who became a very favourite deity among the theistic school of Buddhism as the mother-goddess and saviour. The legend runs that having been rich he took to religion and thus became poor. Meeting a Brahmin who begged him for money to secure his daughter a wedding, he offered himself to a king who desired a hundred men for a human sacrifice, but moved by the sorrows of his fellow sufferers composed the poem and won through Tārā's intervention the lives of all. Other Stotras of doubtful age are numerous, but it can hardly be said that they reach any high level of poetry, though some of them certainly bear every sign of true religious feeling.