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A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s7: 7. Buddhism

A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s7

Language
English

7. Buddhism

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The use of Sanskrit in lieu of Prākrits or Pāli for texts defending Buddhist principles is of uncertain age. What is fairly clear is that the Mūlasarvāstivādins from the first period of their activity adopted Sanskrit as the language of the school, and we have fragments of their canon, from the *Udānavarga*, *Dharmapada*, *Ekottarāgama*, and *Madhyamāgama*, as well as the *Vinaya*, which point to derivation in some degree from texts similar to those represented in the Pāli canon. But the date of these Buddhist Sanskrit texts as extant is wholly uncertain, and has been placed as late as the third century A. D., which is probably too low.³

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³ Cf. Oldenberg, ZDMG. lii. 654 ff.; and see Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy* (1923). Przyluski (*La légende de l'empereur Açoka*, pp. 166 ff.) holds that the literature began *c.* 150 B. C. contemporary with Menander and Patañjali in Mathurā.

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Much more important is the *Mahāvastu*,⁴ a Vinaya text of the Lokottaravādin school of the Mahāsāṅghikas, which presents us with a partial Buddha biography, combined with much miscellaneous matter, including many Jātaka stories of the Buddha in previous births. It reveals a new attitude in its account of the ten stages through which a Bodhisattva must move to achieve Buddhahood, in its insistence on the miraculous birth of Bodhisattvas without parental intervention and on the great number of Buddhas, and in such episodes as the Buddhānusmṛti which is a panegyric of the Buddha in the usual Stotra form of the Kāvya literature. Its date is utterly uncertain, for its structure is complex, as is revealed by style and language; references to such late matters as Chinese speech and writing, a Horāpāṭhaka, and the Huns show that the final redaction need not have been before the fourth century A. D. The language is mixed Sanskrit, both in prose and verse, for verse frequently alternates with prose, versions of the same matter being given sometimes side by side in two accounts. The less good the Sanskrit, the older in many cases the passage, but no absolute criterion is possible. From the point of view of doctrine the work yields all but nothing of importance.

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⁴ Ed E. Senart, Paris, 1882-97. See Oldenberg, GN. 1912, pp. 113 ff.

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The *Lalitavistara*,¹ which also was originally of the Sarvāstivāda school, gives a biography of the Buddha which has been altered in the sense of the Mahāyāna development of Buddhism. The book is full of miracles, including the tales which have been asserted to have spread to the west of the falling down of the statues before the young child when he visited the temple, and of his explaining to the teacher the sixty-four kinds of writing, including those of the Chinese and the Huns. In style the work is as much of a patchwork as in substance. It is written in prose in Sanskrit with verse portions in mixed Sanskrit; these normally do not carry on the prose account, but run parallel with it, giving it in brief form. The ballads of this sort are often clearly old, as shown by comparison with the Pāli tradition as in the case of the Asita legend (vii), the Bimbisāra story (xvi), the dialogue between the Buddha and Māra (xviii), but the prose also is sometimes used in old matter, as in the version of the sermon at Benares (xxvi), while among the verse portions occur later work, where such elaborate metres as Çārdūlavikrīḍita and Vasantatilaka are used. The date of the text is quite uncertain; it was rendered into Tibetan in the ninth century and was well known to the artists of Boro Bodur in Java (850–900). Its spirit of reverence of the Buddha corresponds to the artistic revolution of the Gandhāran art which reveals the portrait of the Buddha, whereas the older tradition of Sānchi and Bharhut showed symbols only of the blessed one, and the work may in the main belong to the period from the second century A. D.

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¹ Ed. S. Lefmann, Halle, 1902–8; trans. F. Foucaux, AMG. vi and xix. See F. Weller, *Zum Lalitavistara* (1915).

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Açvaghoṣa's works have already been considered in their aspects as epics and lyrics or as the application of the tale to moral and religious ends. The *Mahāyānaçraddhotpāda*,¹ if it be really his, is more simply philosophical and develops a very complex system of thought in which the influence of the Brahmanical absolute appears distinctly operative. Avadānas are numerous both individually and in collections; in addition to the *Avadānaçataka* and *Divyāvadāna*, already mentioned, there are the *Dvāviṅçatyavadāna*,² a collection of twenty-two tales in prose with verses inserted; the *Bhadrakalpāvadāna*,³ thirty-four legends in verse; the *Vratāvadānamālā*,⁴ a collection of legends to explain certain ritual vows; and in Kāvya style the *Avadānakalpalatā*⁵ of the polymath Kṣemendra of Kashmir, the one hundred and eighth tale being added by his son Somendra, who also provides an introduction. As usual in Kṣemendra, his version is valuable for matter, not form.

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¹ Trans. T. Suzuki, Chicago, 1900.

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² Mitra, *Nep. Buddh. Lit.*, pp. 85 ff.; on the language, see Turner, JRAS. 1913, pp. 289 ff.

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³ Later than Kṣemendra acc. to S. d'Oldenburg, JRAS. 1893, pp. 331 ff.

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⁴ Mitra, *op. cit.*, pp. 102 ff., 221 ff., 275 ff.

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⁵ Ed. BI. 1888 ff.

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Of the Mahāyāna Sūtras proper the *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka*⁶ occupies the most prominent place. It displays throughout the ideal of the Bodhisattva and luxuriates in the glorification of the Buddha as a being of ineffable glory and might. It appears possible that originally it was written in mixed Sanskrit verses with short prose passages interspersed; but, as we have it, it is in prose with mixed Sanskrit verse sections in the older chapters, while in xxi–xxvi, in which the worship of Bodhisattvas is inculcated, we have prose only; the comparative lateness of these chapters is confirmed by the Chinese version made before 316, which has them out of place as appendices. The work as a whole need not date before A. D. 200 and is not likely to be much earlier. It contains, among other legends, the tale of the father⁷ whose son lived as a beggar in his house but was enriched by his father on his deathbed, a parable of how the Buddha gradually draws mankind to him, which has been unwisely compared with the biblical tale of the son who was lost and was found.

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⁶ Ed. BB. x. 1908 ff.; trans. SBE. xxi.

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⁷ Cf. Poussin, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 317 ff.

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The Bodhisattva Avalokiteçvara, the subject of chapter xxiv of the *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka*, is also the hero of the *Avalo-kiteçvaraguṇakāraṇḍavyūha*, which exists in a prose version and a version in verse, which is, doubtless, the younger and which recognizes an Ādi Buddha or creator god. One form of the Sūtra was rendered into Chinese in A. D. 270, but the date of either of the extant texts is uncertain. It contains the story of the visit of Avalokiteçvara to the abode of the dead, which has been compared with the legend of Nikodemos whence it could, doubtless, have been derived. The paradise of Amitābha and himself are glorified in the *Sukhāvatīvyūha*,¹ which exists in a longer version and in a shorter, apparently derived from the longer text. The *Amitāyurdhyānasūtra*,² extant in a Chinese version, explains how by meditation on the god to attain this paradise; versions of the *Sukhāvatīvyūha* were made in China before A. D. 170 and the three texts are the foundation of two Japanese sects, the Jō-do-shū and Shin-shū. Another heaven, that of Padmottara, is described in the *Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka*,³ rendered into Chinese before A. D. 600. The worship of Mañjuçrī is recorded in the *Avataṁsakasūtra*⁴ or *Gaṇḍavyūha*, rendered into Chinese by A. D. 420, and the chief work of the Ke-gon sect of Japan.

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¹ Ed. Oxford, 1883; trans. SBE. xlix.

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² Trans. SBE. xlix.

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³ Ed. Calcutta, 1898.

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⁴ Winternitz, *GIL.* ii. 242.

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Of more philosophical content is the *Laṅkāvatārasūtra*⁵ in which nihilistic and idealistic doctrines are found, but the work is useless for chronological conclusions, as it refers to the Guptas and to barbarians who succeed them, and so cannot have been composed as we have it before *c.* A. D. 600, though one version was made into Chinese in 443. The *Daçabhūmīçvara Mahāyāna-sūtra*⁶ deals with the ten stages to Buddhahood, and was translated by 400. The *Samādhirāja*⁷ deals with meditation. The *Suvarṇaprabhāsa*⁸ again, though in high repute in Nepal, Tibet, and Mongolia, is a work of inferior type, including many Dhāraṇīs, spell formulae, and inclining to the nature of a Tantra; it was translated into Chinese in the sixth century. In the *Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛcchā*,¹ translated before 618, we find an interesting satire on the laxity of contemporary Buddhism, then waning in strength; the work is written in poor Sanskrit with verses in Prākrit and still worse Sanskrit.

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⁵ Ed. Calcutta, 1900; London, 1925.

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⁶ Mitra, *Nep. Buddh. Lit.*, pp. 81 ff.

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⁷ Mitra, *op. cit.*, pp. 207-21.

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⁸ Ed. Calcutta, 1898.

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¹ Ed. L. Finot, BB. ii. 1901.

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The quintessence of the new doctrine is also given in the numerous *Prajñāpāramitās*, of which we have versions of from 700 to 100,000 Çlokas,² i. e. units of thirty-two syllables in length in prose. These merely assert that intelligence, the highest of the perfections, Pāramitās, of the Buddha consists in the recognition of the vacuity, Çūnyatā, of everything. The most famous is the *Vajracchedikā*,³ diamond-cutter, which spread over Central Asia,⁴ China, and Japan, in which it serves with the *Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya* as the chief texts of the Shin-gon sect.

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² Ed. BI. 1902 ff. Trans. before 405. *Aṣṭasāhasrikā*, BI. 1888.

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³ Ed. Oxford, 1881; trans. SBE. xlix.

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⁴ Leumann, *Zur nordarischen Sprache*, pp. 56 ff., 84 ff.

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The views expressed in the *Prajñāpāramitās* are far better brought out in the *Mādhyamikasūtra*⁵ of Nāgārjuna, who seems to have been a Brahmin, perhaps from southern India, who was converted to Buddhism. His nihilistic or negativistic doctrine accepts, as does the Vedanta, two truths, the higher which ends in the vacuity of all conceptions owing to self-contradiction, and the lower which allows for ordinary life. He may be placed as a later contemporary of Açvaghoṣa. His own comment exists in Tibetan, as do those of Buddhapālita and Bhāvaviveka; that of Candrakīrti of the seventh century A. D. is extant in Sanskrit. To Nāgārjuna are attributed also a *Dharmasaṁgraha*,⁶ a collection of technical terms, and a *Suhṛllekha* extant in Tibet. Of Āryadeva we have already spoken.

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⁵ Ed. de la Vallée Poussin, BB. iv.

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⁶ Ed. Oxford, 1885.

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The Vijñānavāda school is represented by Asaṅga's *Bodhisattvabhūmi*, part of the *Yogācārabhūmiçāstra*,⁷ and the *Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāra*⁸ in verse with comment. His brother Vasubandhu wrote the *Gāthāsaṁgraha* and the *Abhidharmakoça*⁹ of which we have Yaçomitra's Vyākhyā in Sanskrit, and which is one of the most important sources of our knowledge of the tenets of the Sarvāstivādin and other schools of the Hīnayāna. When converted to the Mahāyāna, he wrote many commentaries; one short poem in Kārikās has been rendered from Tibetan. His *Paramārthasaptati* is an attack on the Sāṁkhya system. Of Candragomin's many works we have only a poem, and Çāntideva is the author of a *Çikṣāsamuccaya*,¹ valuable for its large number of citations, written in prose, which shows none of the real ability of his *Bodhicaryāvatāra*.

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⁷ U. Wogihara, *Asaṅga's Bodhisattvabhūmi* (1908).

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⁸ Ed. and trans. S. Lévi, Paris, 1907–11.

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⁹ Trans. de la Vallée Poussin, 1918 ff.

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¹ Ed. C. Bendall, BB. i. 1902; trans. London, 1922.

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The Stotras of Buddhism have already been mentioned; the Dhāraṇīs, spells of all kinds, appear to have been used early, for they occur in Chinese versions of the fourth century; sometimes they appear collected into groups as in the *Meghasūtra*. Even philosophic doctrines were condensed to this shape as in the *Prajñāpāramitāhṛdayasūtra*² preserved since 609 in Japan. In such uses we are in full touch with ordinary Hinduism and still more is the case with the Tantras which either deal with ritual and ceremony or with Yoga. The former are innocuous, and are comparable with Hindu ritual treatises; of this kind is the *Ādikarmapradīpa*.³ The latter include magic, eroticism, and mysticism in the usual Tantra manner; they include the *Kālacakra* which knows of Mecca; the *Mahākāla*, which teaches how to find hidden treasure, win a wife, make a foe mad, or kill him; the *Tathāgataguhyaka*, which enjoins even the eating of the flesh of elephants, horses, and dogs, and intercourse with Caṇḍāla girls; the *Mañjuçrīmūlatantra*, which prophesies the advent of Nāgārjuna, and the *Saṁvarodaya*, which is Çaiva in tone. To Nāgārjuna are actually attributed five of the six sections of the *Pañcakrama*,⁴ but, as one is ascribed to Çākyamitra, who is probably to be dated *c.* A. D. 850, we may reject the identification with the great philosopher. The form of these works is as unsatisfactory as their contents, but it is idle to deny their influence; the Shin-gon sect in Japan rests on Tantras.

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² Ed. Oxford, 1884.

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³ de la Vallée Poussin, *Bouddhisme* (1898), pp. 177 ff.

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⁴ de la Vallée Poussin, *Études* (1896).

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